


Kai's Story - Epic of Remnant

by SunDragon



Series: Kai's Story [1]
Category: Original Work, RWBY
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Copious profanity, Cyberpunk, Dystopia, F/F, F/M, Found Family, Multiverse, comfy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-02
Updated: 2020-12-08
Packaged: 2021-03-10 05:15:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 52
Words: 148,673
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27845092
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SunDragon/pseuds/SunDragon
Summary: "I didn't start out as a hero. And as much as I tried, I don't know if I ever became one. But I knew heroes. I fought beside heroes. Paragons of virtue and glory, shining bright in their colors against the encroaching dark. I began life as nobody from nowhere... a slave without a history, a randomly-generated three letter name, and no hope for anything better. I stepped out of a centuries-old rathole of an apartment one night, and wound up starting on a journey that would result in me meeting the person who would change my life forever, change who I was, change how and why I lived. Pretty blue eyes that looked on me with disdain when they first saw me... and would come to be filled with love. And she'd take me by the hand, etch her soul into mine, and lead me home. To the place over the rainbow."In which words are said to a listener the speaker doesn't know.
Relationships: Blake Belladonna/Yang Xiao Long, Lie Ren/Nora Valkyrie, Sun Wukong/Original Characters, Weiss Schnee/Original Character(s)
Series: Kai's Story [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2038249
Comments: 1
Kudos: 18





	1. Interlude 1

**Author's Note:**

> Kai began, and continues, life as a player character in my CYOA game that I write on Patreon. As I wrote one particular storyline, I got the urge to turn it into a proper prose story, incorporating bits and pieces of other story branches, trying to make it the best I could.
> 
> That's pretty much the long and short of it. That's how she came to be, why she is like she is, and why this story is here.
> 
> Hope you enjoy it.

"So I don't really know where or even when these recordings will wind up. For all I know, whoever finds them won't have the technology to play them, or the ability to understand me, or maybe just won't care. But this is something I'm doing for me... to say what I need to say. Being heard... that's really just a nice bonus if it happens.

"I started life as a nobody from nowhere. I literally woke up one day with no idea of who I was, waiting to be bought. For the next ten years I was who other people needed me to be... the entire time I had that chip in my neck, no matter what I did I was always living for someone else. And getting it out didn't change that overnight.

"I guess most of us start out as nothing. Most just don't remember being nothing... being blank and empty, waiting to grow into a person. Most don't have that sense of the day we began to be our own person for the first time.

"My life began, although I didn't know it, the first time I looked into a pair of pretty blue eyes in a face scrunched up with disdain. Like most people I still had some pain to go through before I could really be born, but that was the day. December first, 2992, as the Makarzian calendar figures it.

"I met the woman who would wake me up, and lead me home. Not to a place, not to a building... but home. To the place over the rainbow."


	2. Chapter 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Kai is cold, and wet, and inadvertently tells a big fat lie to someone who relies on her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When Monty Oum approached Kara Eberle about voicing Weiss Schnee, one of the things he asked her was "Is it okay with you if people don't like Weiss at first?" He wanted his characters to have room to grow, as people, and he knew that meant starting some of them off in a rough place.
> 
> Well Kai starts off in a rough place.
> 
> I hope you'll stick with her, though. I'd appreciate it.

November 24, 2992, 02:12 (Local time, Makarzia)

The rain always stank on Makarzia.

It stank a little differently depending on the time of year and what the weather, such as it was, had been like lately otherwise. But it always stank. And it never snowed.

Kai was of course familiar with snow. She was familiar with the weather patterns of... had to be at least 200 worlds by now. At least. She didn't keep count. But it never snowed on Makarzia. She wondered if it wouldn't stink as bad if it snowed instead of raining.

She fished out her comm and flicked on the screen, checking the temperature. Forty-two, standard. Enough that her breath was fogging and she was cold in her little shorts and tied-in-front top, but that wasn't unusual. Makarzian nights tended toward the cold side anyway in this megasector. Her outfit wasn't really suited for the weather, but then almost nothing she was wearing was of her own choice.

The black booty shorts and black-and-white tie top had just been what she'd been able to steal after her last outfit got so grungy and tattered that no amount of washing or Zee's patch jobs had been able to save it; since then all her "allowance", when it was given, had gone towards food, without so much as an extra three credits to drop in a vending machine for a new t-shirt. The black thigh-highs, themselves starting to pick up a few holes, had been a gift from an "admirer" who had wanted her to wear them in the obvious circumstances, and she wore them because her legs were a little less cold with them and honestly she did think they looked good. The boots were battered and stolen and in need of replacement, probably by stealing another used pair while she was on a job.

Working as an interdimensional mercenary leant itself to a lot of five finger discounts. She didn't have to worry about foreign lawenoff or social scorn when she'd be departing the entire dimension in a matter of hours at most.

The only two things on her body that were her personal choice and had seen her through the years were, one, the coat on her back. Black, long, too big on her, to the point it swallowed her up a little, lined with cloth almost the same shade of bright cherry red as her hair and eyes. Its hood, currently pulled up over said long, somewhat disheveled hair, bore a pair of hollowed cat ears, one pierced with several decorative rings, designed to fit over the real thing, which she herself lacked. Just one of the little things about it being inherited. The other thing of her choice was...

A pack of particularly disreputable street punks in glowing-logoed jackets meandered around the corner, and she saw it in their body language when they spotted her. Predator response, hunger, desire, anger. From the look of them too many and too cheap performance enhancers of several kinds, pumping through their brains, shutting down reasoning capabilities, amping up aggression. She was alone, standing leaned against the wall, one stocking-clad knee sticking out as she pressed a boot sole to the brick, showing off pert boobs and a flat belly. Clearly some working girl who'd strayed too far from the well-lit parts of the sector. Why not finish off the night with a little "stealing"?

Kai angled the other thing out of her coat, pressed her thumb against the guard, let a half-inch of the blade reflect the headlights of a passing streetspeeder. At least a little bit of higher reasoning kicked in and the juicers decided to cross the street before continuing on down it. Satisfied, she thumbed the katana back into being properly settled and withdrew it back into the folds of her coat.

It wasn't a particularly unusual weapon choice around here. And she probably would have still carried it even if the old man hadn't forbidden her from carrying guns on Makarzia. Too paranoid she'd rules lawyer a way around her slave chip's programming and find a way she was allowed to blow his brains out.

Seemed kind of silly. If she was going to do that, she'd have found a way to just cut his damn head off instead. Had certainly been tempted to. But she had Zee to consider... killing the old man wouldn't free either of them, just put them in a world of hurt.

So thinking, she turned her eyes to the store across the way again, closed and of course with the anti-theft shutters rolled down, but with the clock still lit to one side and above its door. It was getting late, as the old man figured things, and she couldn't really put off going back to the apartment any longer. With a resigned huff, she pushed off the wall and started ambling that way.

Kai walked on past the cars parked along the sidewalk... most of them simple people carriers, old and on the verge of breaking down, but still enough to carry upright daytimers to their upright daytime jobs that probably earned them just enough to keep them in fake meat and the run-down apartments that were the majority of this sector's housing. A few were sleeker, prettier models, neon still glowing on the undercarriage or flickering little ghostlights still playing across canopies or angular sloped windscreens, the cars of night creatures, in the area for whatever nefarious purposes.

Speaking of which. She stopped briefly outside an alley at the sound of a cry from within. Within a pair of said night creatures seemed to be in the process of mugging a data addict for his obviously expensive cybereyes. The thieves, both in hooded jackets, their faces covered by half-helmet scanner masks, looked over at her as she stopped, the faint glow of the back of the masks shining from within the hoods, the cyborg between them giving a shriek and stretching a hand out towards her pleadingly.

When she walked on, the harvesters went about their business. Same as she was going about hers.

Not her problem.

She could basically afford to worry about all of one person's problems in the multiverse, and typically they weren't hers, let alone a stranger's. Kai had already realized long ago how she was going to die... bad, on some planet in some dimension far away from anything that could charitably be called friendly. Maybe the best she could hope for being that her body didn't get mistreated too badly, that she wasn't an idiot for believing in an afterlife, and that the old man maybe gave Zee a day to mourn before shoving a weapon in her hand and sending her off to get killed the same damn way.

Kai had already realized a long time ago how her story ended. She didn't have the time or energy to worry about anyone else's.

She trotted up the short flight of cracked, near-crumbling stone steps and pushed inside the front hallway of the apartment building. It, too, stank, from centuries of having Makarzian rain tracked in through it. She fished her key out of one of her dimensional pockets and unlocked the door, stepping right into the kitchen, the old linoleum really more of a faint memory over concrete at this point. 

"Kai, hey." Zee smiled as she looked up from, presumably, staring at the tabletop waiting for Kai to come home. Which Kai would have felt worse about if what typically resulted from her being home was any more pleasant for Zee to watch. Her fellow slave was a handful of years younger than her, how much neither of them had any idea... around twenty, maybe. Her hair was a soft silvery color, done in a long braid down her back, the parts that didn't drift thick and uneven around her pretty face and blue eyes. She was currently wearing her entire wardrobe... all three shirts and the little ribbon choker Ico gave her before the older slave had been sold.

"Hey, Zee. Heat out again?" Kai asked, setting her katana down inside and taking a moment to flap her coat and at least try and get some of the rain off in the hall.

Zee's expression crumpled, her smile becoming strained as she glanced down. "... Doonian's been calling for you."

Ah. Not out. Shut off. Great.

Before Kai could say anything, there was a hoarse, somewhat phlegmy roar from the next room. "Is that Kai? KAAAIIIII!"

"Shit." Kai sighed a little, briefly pinching the bridge of her nose, before forcing a bit of a smile for Zee. Then she pulled on a blank, neutral expression, stuffing her hands into her jacket pockets and making her way into the next room. The cheap viewer propped up on a table made of cinder blocks and construction plastic panels was the only light in the room, casting flickering illumination over the hefty form in a stained armchair, little visible other than meaty, hairy, scarred arms and a bit of a gut in an even more stained undershirt.

Her owner. Carl Doonian.

He'd been a big man in GIPSE once... the Guild of Interdimensional Professionals, Specialists, and Enforcers. Doonian Elite Solutions, his mercenary company, had commanded respect and top prices. He'd started it with a few friends, but when they ditched him to trade on their own growing reputations, he'd needed something to fill the gap, and fast... that something had been slaves. Bought cheap, trained by him personally, turned into mercs as capable and respected as any in the Guild. She'd been told by a semi-reliable source that there were a lot of people who'd have rather been one of Doonian's slaves than free mercs leading their own mercenary company, that was the sort of respect and awe the name Doonian Elite Solutions had commanded.

Then it had all gone to shit.

She'd never heard why, never gotten a straight answer, and she sure as hell wasn't going to ask the old man. But bit by bit everything had crumbled out from under him. By the time he'd bought Kai and Zee, he was down to just two slaves... a sword spiritualist and a genemod soldier. And he relied on those two to train Kai herself into a merc while he drank away his memory of the sorry state of his life.

Then the genemod soldier bought herself out, flipped him the finger, and told him in great detail and at the top of her voice everything he could do with himself and all of the places he could go to do it. Less than six months later and the sword spiritualist was sold. Shortly after, the ritzy apartment in the Guildhall was gone, and this run-down apartment with its whisper of linoleum and threadbare, half-rotting carpet with one bedroom and a mattress on the floor in the corner of the living room was where Kai had found herself coming back to every single night that she wasn't out risking her life for her owner's benefit.

Six years now. As far as Makarzian time had it. The dimensional time differential played merry hell with the ability of mercs who lived that life to tell how old they actually were or how much time had passed for them.

"Yeah, I'm here," Kai announced herself, stepping around to the side just a little bit. Enough that her voice would carry a bit over the porn playing on the screen. Not enough that she'd be easy to see. Actually looking at her tended to put him in a worse mood, and he was never in a good one.

"Where the hell were you? I needed you," Doonian snarled without turning.

"Out, taking a walk, like every night. After you screamed at me to get the hell out, like every night," she answered flatly.

"Don't get fucking smart with me, I said I needed you!"

"Then why didn't you call me on my Guild comm? You know I've got it on me, you ordered me to never be without it," she answered, fishing out the flatscreen device and waggling it a bit.

"Shut the FUCK up! I'm not spending damn credits on a Guild comm call when you should have fucking been here!" He shifted slightly in the chair, his voice shifting to a sullen rumble. "Speaking of which, account's getting fuckin' low. Assholes at Utilicen saying they didn't get their transfer. Go out and earn."

Kai dragged in a breath and huffed it out. "Crystal Dragon, old man, it wasn't night before last that I just gave you every damn Guild credit I earned off a C-rank job, where the fuck did it all go?" 

She knew where it had gone, of course. The moment she'd deposited the money, Doonian had headed for one of the 'pleasure spas' in the better part of the city sector, pouring it down his throat and paying to be allowed access to the throats and other juicy penetrable bits of slightly higher quality girls than could typically be picked up on the streets. But she was cold, and wet, and she knew that he couldn't actually hurt her because he needed her to be in a state to go out and get the money to turn the heat back on.

Thus, she didn't even flinch as the liquor bottle flew past her head and smashed against the wall.

"You didn't GIVE me a damn thing! You didn't GIVE me shit! That was MY damn money! I earned it! I own you, I own your effort, I own your jobs, I'll spend _my_ money how _I_ want! Now you can either get the hell out or actually make yourself useful around the house for once by hacking the heater!"

"Fine, fine, I'll go get some more money for you to guzzle and snort and pump away while we freeze," Kai snarled as she whirled around to stalk back into the kitchen, ignoring her owner's call of 'BITCH!' behind her.

She stopped in the kitchen, turned her head to the side and down, just took a moment to calm herself down. Then she found a smile, albeit a wan one, as Zee stepped up and slid slightly cool hands onto her cheeks, seeing a very similar smile on her fellow slave's face.

"Sorry," Kai murmured. "Just stay out of his way for a while. And-"

"If I sit on the stove when the upstairs neighbors cook it's a little warmer, yeah." Zee's smile turned a little warmer as well, thumbs brushing just under Kai's eyes. "Be careful, okay?"

"I will." Kai raised a hand, gently wrapping it around one of the other woman's wrists, giving a gentle squeeze. "I'll try to be back soon, okay?"

"Okay. I'll see you soon."

* * *

"I didn't know it then but it wouldn't be soon at all.

"It's strange. For six years, ever since the day Ico walked out the door of the Guildhall apartment for the last time, my life had been lived basically for Zee. All the parts I had any control over, anyway. There had been a lot of times where I could have just... given up. Stopped bothering to try. Stopped bothering to get up, stopped bothering to press a hand over the wound until someone could sew me up. It's a more attractive thought than you'd like to think when you're a slave.

"But if I had, where would that have left her? She wasn't trained, she wasn't strong, but Doonian needed his creds. He'd have either sold her for the first offer he got or shoved a kitchen knife in her hand and sent her off to war for pay. Fucker wouldn't even buy her pants, like he was gonna get her a decent weapon even?

"So I lived for Zee. And yet when she exited my life, it wasn't with sudden drama or tears of rage or loss. It just sort of... happened. One event followed another and then she just... wasn't in my life anymore. I was left with the quiet parts of the night when sleep wouldn't come to think about her, remember her, and think about how it made me feel, that she wasn't my reason to live anymore.

"A reason to live, though. Something to look ahead to. Always with the thought of seeing her again someday. Because I needed to tell her the thing that had somehow eluded coming out of my damn mouth all this time. The thing you really need to tell your sister, especially such a kind and gentle one as she was.

"'I love you'."


	3. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Kai indulges in casual grand theft motorcycle, and makes a very simple decision with very complex and far-reaching consequences.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I tried, here, to make a few nods to Kai's beginning as a CYOA protagonist. It's not a thing I'll get to often, but expressing how many choices she had and that she made the one she made was sort of relevant here.
> 
> I've also offered up the first musical cue. You don't have to play these songs during these scenes, obviously, they were just what I wrote the scene to and I think they help set the mood.
> 
> * * *

November 24, 2992, 02:45 (Local time, Makarzia)

'Should've just given one-word answers,' Kai berated herself as she trotted back down the steps, katana once more tucked inside her coat, hands shoved in her pockets. That pissed the old man off too... everything she did pissed him off, pretty much... but she'd misread his mood a bit. A problem ever since the very sight of her had started to infuriate him, requiring her to stay out of view of his face.

She'd developed a keen observational eye for moods and reactions over the years. Part of it was her training, part of it was experience as a mercenary... observational skills kept you alive. A significant part though was learning how and when and what to say to her angry, abusive owner who had a button that sent an electric shock into her spine.

'Really hoped he wouldn't go through the money quite that fast,' she thought morosely, glancing back and forth down the street. He was getting worse. Time was that he might have at least stretched out that much money over a couple of days. And maybe actually paid a bill or two amidst that. But no, now he wouldn't be satisfied until it was all gone in a single bacchanal of excess, all down his throat or up his nose or out his-

Kai hocked and spit in the gutter.

She needed credits. Preferably quickly, before he had too much time to brood and work himself up, and while he was still actually thinking about the heat. Another glance at her comm showed that a cold front was approaching in the next couple of days. Great.

'Buy her some pants, you old piece of shit,' she thought bitterly as she tried to force her mind onto her immediate necessity. Credits. Okay, let's see... she focused a little on her hand, and felt her Guild beacon slip into her palm. She ran her fingers over the smooth surface of the handle-shaped device, then released it back into the dimensional space of her pocket. No. Guild jobs could earn her a lot of money relatively fast, but most of the good ones would take at least a few days, and she couldn't afford too much time differential shifting to make sure she came back within twenty-four hours. Better to find something local.

She glanced up and down the street, considering. A quick bit of street work, maybe? Picking up a handful of johns... if she came back with just enough to get the heat turned back on, the old man would probably scream at her and might even give her a jolt, but decent chance that he'd actually use it to pay the heating bill. ... No, it was raining and cold, and if she went to any of the decent places then she was pushing her luck with Pink-neechan. That left the Drips, and... nnh.

There was straight-up theft, or its opposite, the employment kiosks for an odd job, but both had their own pitfalls. ... Nah. The order of the night was clearly heading to the Glowworm.

She turned her feet that direction, eyeing the sidewalks once she was about half a block away from the apartment. The first speedercycle she saw, she swung astride, pulling out a pocket knife and wedging the point under the dark screen of its startup panel. A flick of a recessed switch inside activated the screen, and she shoved said screen back into place before entering the manufacturer's default startup code. It was an old cycle and whoever it belonged to obviously didn't give that much of a shit about it, since the code worked and she was seconds later flitting through the streets on it, sprays of stinking water flinging up around the tires.

Rain wasn't exactly her favorite weather to ride a speedercycle in. But the part of her soul that wasn't quite dead said there was no truly bad weather for it.

Well, at least on Makarzia, since the rain water never froze. Too many chemicals in it.

Makarzia had long nights, and the good upright daytimers rarely went out during them. The streets were usually fairly empty of vehicle traffic, just the occasional other night creatures on bikes or in streetspeeders, though you'd damn well better keep an eye out for those having races or fleeing each other or the law. Kai wove around a couple of decent-looking people carriers that were probably daytimers out late picking up a bit of strange before drawing within sight of the Glowworm.

She parked her stolen speeder in front of a lawenoff cruiser without a second thought. The sixhour behind the wheel was leaned back, snoring and drooling, his distinctive hat almost sliding off. She thought she saw his partner in an alleyway doing alleyway things with a working girl... hopefully non-destructive alleyway things, but again it wasn't really her business. She stuck her hands in her pockets and trotted across the street towards the club, the sound of drum and bass still faintly managing to leak out. The sidewalks here actually had a fair number of pedestrians, though they still made way to let her through as she approached... uniquely-garbed people semi-openly carrying weapons tended to get that treatment on Makarzia, which was one reason so many people did it.

There was a decent crowd of night creatures of various styles and types outside, either waiting to get in or just killing time outside a bit, waiting for someone to arrive (or come out, to judge by some pissed-off expressions and rolled shoulders). Jackets with lots of straps, parkas with long flowing splits, skinsuits with glowlines, and all of them either equipped with rain hoods or wearing shoulder-caps with one attached. Kai trotted right for the nearest unoccupied bouncer, a big guy with a flattop in a suit, albeit his formal shirt and tie both glowed different colors.

"Weapon surrender station first," he immediately grunted, scowling and pointing to the side.

'God do they just grow these guys in a vat somewhere?' she thought sourly. Then she realized that his face was perfectly symmetrical. '... Aw shit this guy was actually grown in a vat now I feel like the asshole.' "Hey, you new here or something?" she asked, trying to keep her tone at least mildly polite.

"Yeah I'm sure you're a real bigshot who's buddy-buddy with the owner and shit but you still needa head to the weapon surrender station before you try and come in. Those are the rules. I follow the rules."

'Wouldn't say buddy-buddy but I do know her a little I guess.' Doubting that would help, though, Kai instead looked over the other bouncers, until she spotted a tall, dark-skinned man wearing a dome visor instead of sunglasses. "Hey! Ty!" she called, making the guy in front of her scowl and Ty grin a little in recognition. "Someone didn't tell the new guy about Guildcerts!"

"Aw for-" Grumbling, Ty walked over and scowled at the bigger man. "Blip her, newbie."

Scowling, the vat-grown near-giant raised the scanner clipped to his belt to one of Kai's red eyes, which she through long practice didn't blink as he pulled the trigger on it.

"See that little rosette... symbol... that pops up in the corner of her ID?" Ty said, pointing at the scanner's screen. "That means she's Guild certified. Guildcerts are allowed to carry in the club, man."

Instantly the scowl disappeared, the bigger man nodding and looking at Kai, saying in a formal, bordering on friendly tone, "I'm sorry, ma'am, I wasn't told, you can go on in."

Patting him on the arm amiably in passing, Kai ambled on towards the door, and again through long practice didn't so much as blink as the sound and lights hit her from the opening of the door. Much more pleasant was the drying field just inside the door, which vaporized the layer of rain off her coat and left her steaming even as she walked on in, the water vapor picking up the glow of the club lights and making her seem to temporarily have a flickering, color-changing incandescent aura.

_Volkor X - Run Away_

The Glowworm did everything possible to live up to its name. Every edge, right angle, step, and bannister in the place was lined with glowing strips, some steady in color, others pulsing in either time or off-time to the main lights going off above the dance floor. The dance floor itself was a glossy black expanse, colors flashing and pulsing across it, flickering like will'o'the'wisps or skittering across it like things alive, probably theoretically in visualization of the heavy synth music playing, but there were so many people dancing on it that it was hard to say... especially since most of them were wearing glowing stuff too. Even if it was little more than paint.

Kai tried to ignore the allure of the bar or the nearby tables from which she could smell food... if the main account was empty her living expense account definitely was, her food money likely drained to pay for one last kiss somewhere she never, ever wanted to think about the old man possessing. She was here to work, and she needed to see who was available to work for. She took a stroll around the club, trying not to be too obvious... didn't really do to let your prospective employers know you were deciding whether they'd have the pleasure of getting to pay you.

She quickly spotted a table full of Transcendants. They fit right in with the club's aesthetic, their jacket linings and the hoses of their vape masks glowing, even the strips and accent lines of their gloves alight. Kai could see that their leader, Moore, was out with them tonight, the woman's silvery hair and pale eyes picking up the highlighter yellow glow of her coat's hood and almost seeming to absorb and reflect the color, the numerous tubes of her vape mask braided together elaborately. Moore was a decent enough sort, but sometimes tough to understand or be understood by, depending on what high she was riding. And whatever the Transcendants wanted her to do would have a decently high chance of landing her in cuffs if a lawenoff bothered to notice.

No, not tonight.

Kai also noticed that the upper loft VIP area was lit almost entirely in red. That meant that Horace and his Syndicate guys were probably in the house too. Horace Allfather, the richest, most powerful, and possibly scariest ganghead for multiple city sectors around. "As vengeful as the night is long"... a big man with big plans. Literally a big man, a tower of muscle with a thick red near-literal mane.

And matching red eyes.

'Yeah. No.'

Kai wasn't in the mood tonight to put up with Horace's repeated implications that he might be her father, that she was the product of some of his youthful sowing of wild oats tragically given up to slavers for a quick buck when, he oft implied, he would instead happily have taken her in and made her legitimate. All of it said with a smirk, that calculating glitter in his eye that said he knew that as a mindwiped slave, he thought there had to be a part of her that desperately wanted to believe him, to beg him to buy her and mold her in his own image, to become the ruthless tool for his ambitions that his real daughter would have been.

'Well fuck him for being perceptive,' she groused to herself as she made her way towards the still exclusive but less expensive area of the club. She knew who'd probably be in, and it was a far preferable option to either of the others. Thorny in its own ways but far less of a problem to navigate.

* * *

"Sometimes I wonder what the hell would have happened if I hadn't decided as I did that night.

"If I'd gone to do collections or play guinea pig for Moore, or put up with Horace's smarm to get a high-paying job from him. Well hell I know at least one thing that would have happened if I'd gone to Horace, someone would've died. Those were the kind of jobs he offered. 

"Looking back I'd really love to say that I avoided him purely on moral principle. And there was at least a little bit of that, I'm thankful to say. I'd killed people for money, that was part of being a Guild merc, pretty much, but Horace... I'd worked for him before. Killed people for him before. But it was always one of his guys that had decided to do him dirty, or a gangbanger from a rival gang, something like that. People in the life, who had to know it was coming, had virtually agreed to it by being in the life. But I always knew, eventually, he was gonna try and get me all the way in, get me to pull the trigger on some innocent salary drone whose crime was being in the way of Horace Allfather's ambitions in some way the poor bastard had no control over. 

"I still had a little bit of my soul left. I guess I still had the good sense to try and keep it.

"But no if I'm honest I mostly didn't want to deal with the temptation. Horace considered Satan a role model, and he loved dealing out the temptation. I wasn't ever stupid enough to think he had sincere affection for me, but he'd have loved to play the role of my father just so he could pull me in and turn me into his creature. And yeah, he was right, there was part of me that wanted to believe it just so that I could stop being... nobody, from nowhere.

"Just... thank the Dragon I didn't. Which is a dumb thing to say, really... the Crystal Dragon doesn't do anything for us. He doesn't ask anything of us, doesn't interfere, it doesn't matter if you thank him or beg him or pray to him. All you can do is try to live the best you can, hope he forgives you for your failures, and makes a home for you after all is said and done. But still... thank the Dragon I never gave in to Horace.

"My father was out there on a far away world waiting for me. Even if neither of us knew it then. And I'd have never found him if I hadn't decided to work for the Holy Dragons that night."

* * *

Sakai had never done Kai wrong... done her a little dirty, maybe, a little cross once even, but he'd never full-out wronged her. She could trust him to keep to the letter of his agreements, and generally the spirit, as long as she did her best to keep up her end of things. A bit of that dirty and cross had maybe come from her side too, come to think of it. But they'd always parted on good terms, and he'd never not come through on paying her, which was more than she could say for some Makarzians.

As usual Sakai was surrounded by two things... bodyguards and working girls. The former were, like him, dressed in slightly 'lounge lizard' style suits, more than a few faux snakeskin or eelskin or sharkskin jackets to go with untucked formal shirts, gaudy belt buckles, overpriced shoes with split toes. Most were armed with katanas or ninjatos, and accessorized with lots of gold necklaces and rings, or in a few cases cybernetics with very visible scarring around them. The working girls were all to Sakai's taste, meaning big tits, small shiny dresses, and from the giggling either not a lot going on upstairs or good at putting on that show.

Sakai himself dressed much like his men, albeit a little better, almost bordering on classy with the sleek black suit, white silk shirt, and single silver chain with a single round orange gem on it, resting almost in the palm of the hand of the dragon tattooed across his chest and coiling around his neck. His skin was a pale gold, hair black, short, and somewhat spiked, his features bordering right on handsome and somehow not making it entirely there. A thin stubble of scar tissue ran across his forehead, down across his eye, and tried to curl back down towards his mouth; the eye in question was solid black with a glowing golden slit pupil, though the very faint trail of pixels as he focused on Kai's approach said it was a cybernetic, and not the "true dragon eye" Kai knew he insisted his men spread rumors that it was.

"Kai! How good to see you again!" he called, actually seeming to at least halfway mean it, his hand not ceasing in fondling one of the large, silver sequin-sheathed breasts of the prostitute beside him. "It's been some months, how are you?"

"Can't complain," Kai answered, the bit a familiar routine for them. She waited a precise beat before shrugging, tilting her head to the side. "Well, I could, but who would listen?" The joke got some giggles out of Sakai's hired dates, so at least that was something.

"Looking for work?" Sakai prompted. At Kai's nod, he tapped a portion of the table loaded with bar snacks and drinks. It split apart to provide access to the further back portion of the booth seats, somehow not spilling a single peanut from a bowl as it rearranged its contents in the process. Kai stepped through the opening, glancing pointedly at one of the girls, who pouted a bit but obligingly scooted to the side and made room for the redhead, who sat as the table merged back together. "Ah, and of course, feel free," he added, flitting a hand towards the food.

Trying not to seem too eager, Kai picked up one of the roast meat skewers... well, probably pseudomeat, but the Glowworm did the really good stuff of that so it was fine. Real beef wasn't terribly rare on Makarzia, but only if it was ground and frozen. The cuts you could actually do anything with were usually expensive or some variety of fake, either textured vegetable protein or vat-grown. Vat-grown meat was technically scientifically identical to the "real" thing, and yet every blind taste test, people could consistently tell. Funny ol' multiverse.

"So let me guess," Sakai continued after letting Kai get most of the way through the skewer. "Doonian drank his way through every credit in the account again."

"Drank and whored," Kai corrected, resisting the urge to lick her fingers... briefly. She didn't see any napkins, after all.

"Ah, noble pursuits for a man," Sakai declared in a lofty tone and with a broad grin, before inclining his head as Kai gave him a rather tired look. "As long as he also takes care of his family."

"Well, I'm not family, am I? I'm a slave," Kai corrected, voice more resigned than anything as she popped a bit of fried tofu in her mouth and crunched.

"Say household, then. A man should care for those who are in his care, whether they be blood or otherwise. What is it this time, the water?"

"Heat," Kai answered, shrugging and slumping back, briefly sneaking a peek down the front of the dress of the working girl beside her. 'Damn girl, I wanna say that whatever those cost had to have been too much but I would be lying.'

"And with a cold front coming in too," Sakai said, giving a soft 'tch'. "And poor Zee, is he still not buying her any-"

"Yeah yeah our situation sucks and I'm a huge giant softy for giving a shit about my fellow slave," Kai interrupted with a snap, glowering at him. "Could we skip the bullshit and get to talking about if you have work for me or not?"

Sakai raised an eyebrow, and for a moment Kai worried that maybe she'd dinged his pride a little too much. Instead he merely gave a small shrug, including a little bounce of his other girl's breast with his fingers, and said, "Your forgiveness. You know how it is for Neokuza, a bit of drama, a lot of talking, it's... expected." He grinned, flicking a few fingers towards his eye. "As luck would have it, in exactly one week there is a very big meeting coming up, and I could use more swords. Yours is always valued. Of course, considering the importance of the meeting, everyone has to be under watch until then, so you'd have to come back to the Temple with us, work as a guard until the meeting proper."

'A week away from the apartment, at least,' Kai thought, pursing her lips just a little. She really didn't like to be away that long. The old man almost never turned his rage on Zee directly... but Kai had always suspected that was because she was usually there to pull aggro, one of the things she truly excelled at. 

Still. "What's the pay situation?"

"Kai, we've always done right by each other," Sakai asserted, grinning some. "And I'm still hoping one of these days you'll consent to letting me buy you and make a proper Dragoness of you." Then his face actually turns a bit serious. "Look, like I said, there's that cold front moving in... we'll pay you by the day, and have it delivered daily to Doonian's account so he can't splurge it all at once. And I'll have one of my people subtract the heat bill from the first day's and pay it themselves out of that, so he can't avoid it. He might be upset, but with one of my men explaining how it works to him, he should still accept it."

'I bet,' Kai thought, suppressing her snort. She'd catch merry hell from the old man when she got back, but she was used to that. "Anything else if I just wanted a quick cred?" she asked after a moment's thought.

"Well. I could always use a personal bodyguard for tonight," he answered, his flesh-and-blood eye twinkling a bit.

Yeah, she knew what that meant. Not like it exactly took a deep reader. Kai snorted gently. "No offense but I think I'll take the hired blade job."

"You wound me so grievously, and yet I take you in again and again," Sakai declares, not stopping his grinning for a moment as he presses a hand to his chest. Kai guessed it took some of the sting out of someone saying they don't want to fuck you when they've already got an F-cup in their hand. "I will just assume it has more to do with not wanting Doonian to get himself a single payment again."

"Sure, we can go with that," Kai said with a soft laugh of her own.

"Have you been keeping up with your Nipponzi?" Sakai asked after a moment, switching languages.

"Of course," she answered, grinning a bit. "How's my accent getting?"

"You sound like you grew up in the Kuzahood. Doonian doesn't know what he's abusing." Sakai's grin actually turned a bit sad as Kai just shrugged. "After this job, let's talk again about buying you out, hm?"

"Yeah. Sure, okay."

* * *

"I mean theoretically there wasn't much to talk about.

"If Sakai had wanted to, he could have bought me off of the old man without much trouble. The Holy Dragons weren't Syndicate rich, but they were one of the oldest and wealthiest gangs in the sector outside of Horace. Add in that Sakai had a lot of guys who were very, very good at 'negotiating', there was literally nothing stopping him from just buying me no matter what I said. He could have ordered me to warm his bed, fight for him, whatever he wanted, and I wouldn't have had a damn thing to say about it.

"But I'd have never been a Holy Dragon that way.

"I could have been a soldier, a fighter, a toy, but never a Holy Dragon. And Sakai, as irreverent and foppish as he seemed, understood that difference very, very well. For all the ridiculous trappings, the drama, he was basically a prince. He'd been raised to rule the Holy Dragons since he was a child. He understood the value of having someone there because they truly wanted to be... the absolute importance of trust.

"'A Dragon can only trust another Dragon'. It's their rule. So if I wasn't a Dragon, he'd never be able to trust me. And he wanted to have someone he trusted watching his back.

"I knew how important that was. I hadn't really felt it in six years at that point.

"Oh sure, like Sakai and me, I'd had people I worked with well. That I was ninety-nine percent certain wouldn't screw me over or do me wrong. But... mm.

"... Put it this way. Imagine you could take your heart out. Just pop it out of your chest, and it kept working just fine, pumping away and keeping you alive. If you did that, you'd probably want to be really, really careful about if you ever literally handed someone else your heart, wouldn't you? Like, sure, you'd go into a firefight with them... but would you set the only thing keeping you alive in their hands when all they'd have to do is squeeze if the urge took them?

"Really think about it.

"The list is probably pretty short, isn't it? Still, you're lucky if you've got one at all, congratulations. Sakai though, he'd hand his heart to any Dragon secure in feeling it was safe. That's what being a Dragon _meant_ to him.

"I'd have handed Zee my heart, no question. But what would she have done in a bad situation? She was wonderful, precious, but she might have been able to fight off a particularly fat house cat to protect said heart. No, the two people I could have expected to march into Hell with me, either one of them holding my heart in one hand and feeling sure they'd have walked out with it and me in the same condition we entered in, I thought I was never going to see them again.

"I think at that point half of refusing Sakai was that I knew I couldn't give him back what he was willing to give me. If he'd freed me and Zee and I'd become a Dragon, then yes... I sure as hell would have taken his heart in my hands and died protecting it. But because of obligation. Because that level of devotion would have been the only way I could have paid him back for what he'd given me and the only family I had left.

"But I couldn't have handed him mine. And as jaded, as bitter, and hurting as I was... I knew it wouldn't have been fair. That wasn't what he wanted from me, and it would have been a lie."


	4. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Kai asks highly pertinent personal questions of her employer, and finds out the potential consequences of annoying a tattoo artist.

November 24, 2992, 04:55 (Local Makarzian time)

Kai let herself wander towards the edges of the group as they left the Glowworm and set off. Sakai had two kinds of people around him, not counting the working girls... Kai thought of them as blades and biguglies. The blades were mostly like her... they blended in well with the Makarzian crowd (while still being fairly obvious as Holy Dragons), they moved easily, they all had wary eyes and hands that tended to stay near their swords. The biguglies were large, intimidating, and, well, most of them were ugly as hell. They were the ones who clustered in a tight group around Sakai... the big, obvious protection.

Sakai's girls made some token protests and squeals about getting a few droplets of rain on them, despite the biguglies having formed a rather impressive canopy of umbrellas over them and Sakai. Kai figured it was probably mostly a show... something to get him to pay attention to them, comfort them, and to put him in a tipping sort of mood.

She'd done the same sort of thing before, certainly. Though most of the times selling herself, people weren't interested in the "date" part of the experience. They were ordering off the "direct" menu. But credits were credits, and if someone actually wanted to feed her beforehand damned if she wouldn't craft a giggly happy date persona for them for a little while.

The girls were putting on a show and Sakai was putting on a show, as she saw it. It was why they walked instead of taking a stretchspeeder or something. They were close enough to the Kuzahood that he'd want to be seen out and about. And when he was seen out and about, it was important to project the right image... strength and opulence. Always for the Neokuza, strength and opulence. The expensive suit, the expensive girls, the numerous bodyguards. Showing his people that the Holy Dragons were strong, prosperous, and doing well. According to the Neokuza, that meant all the territory they controlled was also strong, prosperous, and doing well.

'Here it comes, more show,' Kai thought as they walked through a residential area, a nervous-looking man in a simple raincoat stepping out of the cover of one of the Nipponzi-style apartment building doorways. An obvious daytimer, woken up early in order to catch his feudal lord. She caught the eye of one of the biguglies and tilted her head towards the man as a 'heads up'.

"You got business?" the large man grunted in Nipponzi as the much smaller, much older man approached.

"Please, if I might just speak to Sakai-sama for a few moments."

"It's fine," Sakai declared breezily, waving a hand. All of it show. Everyone knew that if someone in the Kuzahood needed to talk to Sakai, it was just a matter of asking. But the ritual needed to be adhered to. Coming to him amidst his opulence, "catching" him at random in a way that required waiting and confronting the strength.

The biguglies in front stepped aside to let the older man through. "Sakai-sama, I must please beg your indulgence. I do not have the money for this month's protection fee, I am in the red."

"I see." Sakai raised his eyebrows elaborately. "And why has this happened?"

"My grandchild, her school bag was stolen. We had to replace all of her schooltablets, as well as pay to replace the gym uniform that was in the bag. That, and the cold weather, our business has not been as good..."

Sakai plastered a look of exaggerated sympathy on his face and clapped the man on the shoulder. "Morimo-san, don't give it another thought. We'll overlook this month. Pay back a little extra on your other payments when you can."

"Thank you, Sakai-sama. Thank you," the older man murmured, bowing repeatedly as he backed away.

One of the other blades prowled up to Kai, snorting softly. "Who the fuck steals a kid's school bag?"

"Someone who knows that replacing those damn tablets costs enough to put a shopkeeper in the red, I guess," Kai replied with her own snort. "And that an unwashed girl's gym uniform will get you a tidy handful of credits if you know where to sell it." At the other fighter's glance, Kai raised an eyebrow. "Don't judge, I only ever sold stuff I wore."

'Amazing how he can make extorting a shopkeeper look magnanimous,' Kai thought with a mental snort as they resumed their walk. That was the Neokuza all over... acting like they were doing everyone around them a favor with organized crime. Then again, when they charged protection money, they did tend to actually protect the people they charged, at least from rival gangbangers and non-authorized criminals. Kai had a sneaking suspicion that whoever stole the kid's backpack would get thrown a beating by a couple of dragon-tattooed youths if they got found out.

That was how the Holy Dragons, or any Neokuza clan, did things. You paid your fealty, showed your respect, went along with the show, and they actually kinda-sorta took care of you. Probably more than the law, anyway.

As they approached Holy Dragon Lake, some of the biguglies split off, escorting Sakai's girls towards one of the smaller, nicer-looking apartment buildings nearby... probably Sakai's own little pleasure den where he kept girls when he hired them for a day or two, to visit outside the somewhat more sacrosanct halls of the Temple. At least sacrosanct enough that he didn't bring random hookers home to it.

The lake itself was massive, and yet made no pretensions that it wasn't artificial. It was ringed by towering skyscrapers of mirrored glass and steel, no park area or transition in an attempt to pass itself off as a natural thing, just starkly sloping cement on three sides and most of the fourth leading down to even, still waters, flat and black in its distance from any of the neon or blaze of the rest of the city. Just a flat black square of the water set into the metal and concrete of the sector, apparently without feature or purpose, other than a series of scanner arches leading away from the sole dock on one side.

The group approached said dock, passing a few at a time under the sensor arch at the end of the stairs leading down to it, filing into the simple, well-lit covered area and then boarding a covered hoverskiff. Kai maneuvered to settle herself down by Sakai, and she was well-known enough amongst the other guards that none of them protested. She herself made no particular protest as Sakai settled an arm around her shoulders, even as his fingers rubbed along her upper arm suggestively.

"Could I ask you something?" she said to him, using the galacommon instead of Nipponzi. Almost certainly everyone in the hoverskiff spoke it, but it was a semi-polite way to indicate they should shut their ears and pretend they didn't.

"Certainly," Sakai answered breezily, grinning again.

"Why do you even wanna fuck me?"

Sakai raised his eyebrows. "Why, Kai, what a sudden burst of insecurity you're having."

She snorted. "You know what I mean. I'm not your type. I'm at least three cup sizes down from your usual minimum and I don't really do much giggling or batting my lashes. And if you'll notice, given the choice between getting paid for sex and getting paid to maybe kill someone, I'm sitting here with a katana ready. So how come you keep asking?"

He just smiled, stroking his fingertips up and down her arm a bit, in something that might almost have passed for honest affection. "Maybe I just think we'd have fun."

"Mm. Maybe you just want what you can't have," she countered, her eyes sparkling. Just the tiniest bit.

"That might be it too," he admitted with a chuckle.

* * *

"I wonder sometimes what it would have been like.

"Oh, not the sex. I've been with enough guys like Sakai that I had a fair idea what the sex would have been like, the purely physical act. I don't doubt he'd have been a little more practiced at it, maybe a little more thoughtful or considerate than those other guys, because underneath it all I kind of think that's who he was. I don't really give the sex itself much of a thought.

"But every so often, just as a what if, I wonder what it would have been like if I'd given in, and then in the midst of it I'd kissed him, and maybe it had meant something to both of us.

"Kai the Dragoness. Kai-donno. Just, y'know, what a life with him would have been like.

"The weirdest damn thing is I think I would've been pretty damn happy. At the end of the day, the Holy Dragons were kind of my sort of people. I would have had an easy as hell time of adapting to the way they did things. Living that particular gangbanger life.

"He would have treated me right, I think.

"But I think those are just idle fancies, the sort that you cast off into the night as a 'what if' when it's quiet and you're a little lonely for whatever reason. It's probably arrogant as hell, but I think it was the same thing for him. Wondering if maybe, if I ever finally gave in, it would lead to something more with someone that actually understood him and was far closer to what he himself was than whatever other Neokuza clan's princess he was technically married to."

* * *

_ Scandroid - Neo-Tokyo (Toxxify Remix) _

The skiff skimmed along the surface of the dark water, giving just the faintest bobbing motion with the shifts in its surface. One by one it passed through the scanner arches that led towards the center of the lake, where the line abruptly stopped at absolutely nothing. Kai kept her gaze out the window, out at the water. Tried not to think of what might be going on at home, if she'd made the old man too mad, if Zee might catch a shock or a slap because she had played things the wrong way.

Still, as the skiff came to a stop just beyond the final scanner arch, she found her attention turning to the water. She braced herself not to react too much, not to seem too awed, to keep her image of jaded calm and utter world-weariness.

But damn if this wasn't always a hell of a show.

From deep, deep down in the dark waters a faint glow began to appear, growing stronger and larger by the moment, like some great bioluminescent leviathan rising up out of the depths intending to swallow them whole. The water all around the skiff began to churn violently in the shift of it, flashes of white-flecked waves rising and crashing all around them, the sole safe spot being the precise one the skiff had been remotely guided to.

The first thing to break the surface was a pointed spire, water streaming down off the sloped roof of the Nipponzi-style building as it rose from the lake, its pink and purple edging illuminating the massive three-tiered main structure as well as the long wings that ran out in front of it, forming a 'courtyard' of water in which the skiff now resided. There was a world-rattling clank as it settled fully into place, accompanied by the ignition of a massive holographic halo arcing vertically around the main compound, glowing through the fog and steam the building's emergence from the lake had caused.

The Holy Dragons didn't fuck around about security.

The skiff slid forward, settling into a dock fitted exactly for it and locking into place, people starting to file off, most steaming and smoking as they passed through the anti-weather field built into the entrance door. The interior was decidedly oldschool... low-tech in appearance, a lot of dark wood (some of it probably even genuine), painted paper doors, embroidered cloth covering the walls, and carved stone dragons displayed on pedestals and tables.

"Ah, before I forget," Sakai declared, turning to Kai. "Kyoko will of course want to see you. You remember the way?"

"Yup," Kai answered in a slightly resigned tone, before switching back to proper Nipponzi and adding, "I'll get it done." She turned and made her way off down the hallway away from the rest of the group. She had little doubt that despite the lowtech appearance of the temple's interior, she was no doubt being watched very intently by multiple cameras and possibly even a cloaked drone.

She wasn't a Dragon, after all. Even if she was about to have one put on her. But that was just a technicality, a pledge she was making, not going all-in. Until she did go all-in, she was tolerated in the Temple, but not really welcome. She'd be watched, constantly, vigilantly, and if she fucked up she'd probably never even hear what killed her.

Kai soon spotted the door she was looking for... lowtech in appearance, complete with the elaborate, beautiful murals in ancient Nipponzi style on it, but at her approach it slid open automatically. "Knock knock," she declared, rapping on the door arch with her knuckles as she passed, just to be polite.

"Hello again, Kai." The Holy Dragons' Great Artist turned towards her from the stool she was sitting on next to a variable-configuration chair, a nice one with such a skillfully-done pseudoleather pad that you could almost let yourself think it was the real thing. The raven-haired woman was wearing red oni-style vape mask that electronically filtered her voice and occasionally issued puffs of slightly sweet-spicy smoke from amidst its fangs, a pair of red panties, and black tabi socks. Well, that and the ink covering every part of her skin. "Nice to see you again."

She'd told Kai once that the style was called 'ukiyo-e'... Kyoko was apparently her generation's only acknowledged Master of the style, and she did it exclusively on one medium: living skin. Most of her body was covered in stylized blue and white waves, though dipping and weaving amongst all of them were dragons of a dozen different descriptions and colors... the only person allowed to wear every type of dragon the Holy Dragons acknowledged, indicating her right to etch those dragons into the skin of others. 

The flesh and blood of her arms ended about halfway down her forearms, transitioning perfectly and without scarring to polished red carbon fiber, the surface printed in the pattern of scales, fingers molded into short, curled, and yet decidedly sharp talons to enhance the draconic appearance. Not to break the pattern, however, the ukiyo-e wave pattern continued down across the prosthetics, albeit etched in silver rather than ink.

"Yeah," Kai answered, bobbing her head as she shrugged out of her jacket and hung it up on one of the hooks beside the doorway. "You too. Again."

Every Dragon was given a unique tattoo, symbolizing their devotion, their rank, and their skill. Even the hired blades that contracted to them were marked... pragmatically, so that they could be identified easily and not accidentally cut down by their own side when the fighting got thick. The deeper meaning was that if someone betrayed the Dragons while wearing one, they had to walk around with the mark of the people they'd been dishonorable to until they could find another body artist to remove it.

And every body artist on Makarzia knew what that meant.

"Belly or lower back this time?" Kai asked. She'd been through this a good handful of times now, and this was positively routine.

Kyoko canted her head slightly, and blew a stream of smoke out from her mask. "... Shorts off."

Kai blinked. Then made a bit of a face. "Oh, come on, for serious?"

"Yes, for serious. Shorts off."

The redhead hesitated only briefly, before huffing and unbuttoning the shorts, peeling them down her legs and working them off over her boots. She shaved, when she could, just because it made a lot of things easier. Once she clambered up into the chair and laid back, feeling the pseudoleather pad mold itself gently to and support her bare ass, she still wasn't surprised when Kyoko began spraying something from a canister onto her crotch, waiting for it to foam briefly before dabbing it away with a cloth, leaving the skin perfectly bare of the just-turning-fluffy stubble that had been there.

"Was this your idea, or Sakai's?" Kai asked, trying not to grumble. Or squirm.

"Sakai asked me to make it a little more significant this time. I chose the particulars." Kyoko's smooth carbon fiber fingertips gently pressed here and there across Kai's crotch and belly, not quite cool and not quite warm but somehow both at once. Kai twitched a little at the touches, but did her best to stay still... she'd have been more aggravated, but Kyoko was always such an utter and consummate professional that she couldn't really argue. It was not a look of prurient lust or sexual interest in her dark eyes, just a calm, steady appraisal of what she was working with. Eyes whose irises adjusted size with a visibly mechanical motion as she glanced up at the redhead's face. "You have absolutely beautiful skin, you know. No scar tissue, good pores, you don't even have microabrasions from the previous tattoo removals."

Kai shrugged a little, pressing her shoulders against the chair's pad. "What can I say? I don't heal fast but I do heal good. I got shot here a couple of months ago," she added, pointing at a spot just under her left breast. "Didn't even get really nice treatment, just patched up enough to get me functional. Now, poof, like it didn't happen. Personally I'd trade healing up pretty for healing up faster, though."

"You shouldn't. But then, that's a skin artist's view, and you are a skin artist's dream." Kyoko turned away to the table nearby, starting to prep her somewhat oldschool electric needle, fitting it with a multicolor attachment at the end and running a cable from said attachment to a port in her right cyberhand. "Which is why it galls me so much to put art on your skin that I know I'm just going to have to take off again."

"I know," Kai muttered, rolling her eyes.

"This is the fourth time, Kai."

"I  _ know _ !" Kai huffed a little, but settled in, the buzzing of the needle preceding the sharp pricking on her skin. Her body knew better than to squirm at this sensation by now, trained well to it, though it was definitely a whole new experience feeling it across the front of her crotch. Knowing better than to try and watch Kyoko work, since it was just more likely to create said squirming, Kai rested her head back and stared at the ceiling. "I'm just not much of a joiner, Kyoko. The whole issue of being someone else's slave aside."

"I don't do slave tattoos," Kyoko spoke up, the words a little knee-jerk and reflexive, just a bit of an edge entering her otherwise calm, slightly airy voice.

Kai raised her head a little, looked at the other woman's face, raised an eyebrow. "You always say that. But you're tattooing a slave. What's the difference?"

Kyoko didn't answer immediately, continuing her work, left hand calmly, methodically dipping in to dab a bit of blood away here and there, barely pausing in the etching as she did. When she did, her voice was calm again. "If your owner had sent you to Sakai, telling you to work for him, then we wouldn't be having this conversation. You would be getting a very lovely, very adequate tattoo from one of my apprentices." Another few moments of etching, wiping, cybereyes focusing in and out silently. 

"You are being tattooed by me because even though you are a slave, you choose to work for us," Kyoko continued after a moment, the form of the long, lanky beast starting to come together on the redhead's skin. "You were the one who selected Sakai, who made the choice to be, even temporarily, a Dragon. You get art. Because all true art is an expression of will and choice... skin art moreso than any other. When another artist paints, it is a matter only between themselves and their audience. When the skin artist works, it is a thing shared between them and the one whose skin is marked."

Kai turned that one over in her head for a few moments. "So it has to be a choice for both of us."

"Yes. You know that this is part of accepting a contract with our clan, and you accept that. In return I do my best to put true art on your skin. Though I'm tired of having to take it off again, so consider this my little bit of payback." Just barely visible beneath the mesh at the front of her vape mask, Kyoko smiled. "You keep failing to commit, so I tattoo your pussy."

Kai snorted, glancing away. "Yeah, okay, fine, fair enough." She looked back at Kyoko after a moment, actually feeling something a little like sincere regret. "Sorry to make you waste your time, I guess."

"Time spent making art is never wasted, Kai. I may lament my efforts disappearing from your skin, but the very nature of skin art is that it is transitory. Time, age, and death steal them away like they do no other art, and it is all the more beautiful for being as fleeting as life itself. The art is art still, and the time spent making it with you will become part of my craft forever." Kyoko briefly took a moment to wipe the needle, glanced at the ink reserves, then continued her work. "Saying that, I implore you to consider Sakai's offer seriously this time, Kai. Because I would be very happy spending the rest of your life making art with you, etching each transition from hired blade to Holiest Dragoness."

"The fuck is a Holiest Dragoness?" Kai asked with another rise of the eyebrows. But Kyoko only chuckled softly, the room falling silent save for the buzz of her tattoo needle.

An hour later Kai was walking down the hallway again, her coat back in place, a glittering emerald dragon emerging from below the waistband of her shorts and coiling around her navel. She paused on her way to the female mercenary dorm, spotting a door painted a glittering blue. Sliding it open manually, she looked at the simple four-tatami shrine room, at its head a simple, thin table bearing a long, coiled dragon carved of blue crystal, its scales prominent and spiky as they overlaid each other, its eyes inlaid with solid red gems.

The Holy Dragons and the Crystal Dragon were unrelated, but considering the parallels and that it was a popular religion for mercenaries, hired blades, and general disreputable sorts, finding at least a token effort at a shrine in the Temple wasn't too surprising.

Kai stepped inside, closing the door after herself and settling to her knees with them spread a bit, sitting back on her heels. You didn't really pray to the Crystal Dragon... he wasn't that sort of god. He didn't demand anything, and in return he also didn't offer anything. Asking him to help you was pointless, but he also didn't punish you. At the end he simply either forgave you your trespasses or he didn't. If you were forgiven, you got to live forever in one of his scales. Hopefully it would be close to the scales of the people you loved, so you could find them and be together again.

So when you believed in the Crystal Dragon, prayer was more like... soul searching. If you thought you still had one. 

'... I'm trying my best,' Kai thought out into the Black above as she closed her eyes and bowed her head. 'At least, I think I am. I can't even tell anymore, and I wonder when I stopped being able to. I just... want to get through this week. And the next. And then the day after that. I just want to get Zee through them. So... forgive me what it takes me to do that. Please.'

Then she rose, exiting and making her way to the female mercenary dorms. Her thoughts turned back towards the tattooing, and the conversation around it. 'Holiest Dragoness,' she thought as she spotted an empty bunk and made her way towards it. 'Fuckin' Neokuza and all their drama and ritual.' She flopped down on her front, head aimed generally at the pillow...

... then yelped and very quickly lurched onto her back, wincing sheepishly as she got shushed from one of the nearby bunks.

The stuff Kyoko had sprayed on the tattoo would make it heal fast, but that didn't mean it wasn't still tender. Huffing softly, Kai pulled the pillow over her face and flopped her arms over it to sleep.

* * *

"I wasn't doing my best and somewhere inside I knew it.

"I was doing what was most certain and easiest. And that's rarely our best.

"I could have stopped those cybergear thieves. I could have checked on the working girl. And a hundred, hundred other things I just walked right on by despite something in my heart telling me I shouldn't. ... Heh. A little something that sounded like Ico's voice, really, telling me that the greatest strength is being strong for those who can't. I didn't always walk on by... but I did too often.

"... I should have been strong for those people and I wasn't. And I can't ever fix that. I just have to live with it. I just have to look at the times I was strong afterwards and hope that it in some way balances the scales. I do hope the Dragon forgives... not for the reward, but because I want him to know that I understand in my heart I was wrong. It isn't about asking his forgiveness so I can get my home in his scales, it's about asking his forgiveness because I know that I was wrong, and I tried to be better.

"I told myself that I couldn't risk getting fucked up in a fight with some random street punks because then I wouldn't be able to take care of Zee. But I never thought to ask myself what Zee would have thought about that. Because she was a sweet, kind soul that would have cried herself to sleep thinking of some poor eyeless data addict crawling out of an alley trying to get to a clinic.

"I failed those people and I failed her. I wasn't ready to be the person that Ico raised me to be. But I would be soon.

"I was one week away from meeting her. From everything changing, though it would be a few weeks still before I realized that it had. December first, 2992. My birthday. The day I met my Rainbow."


	5. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Kai talks to birds and fights with foxes.

November 31, 2992, 13:35 (Local Makarzia time)

Kai let out a long breath into her cupped hands, not that it particularly helped all that much. The air was particularly frigid on the lake now that the cold front had moved in, and her short shorts and tiny top weren't really cutting it. But it was what she had, and she wasn't a Dragon, so she needed to make do with what she had for now.

'Thank fuck Sakai told me he got the heat back on,' she grumbled silently to herself as she paced along one of the balconies ringing the massive central edifice of the Temple, which had raised above the water and into the wan grey daylight for... whatever reason. Whatever it was, people needed to be walking guard duty while it was up, and since the Dragons had a good handful of hired blades, guess who got to freeze their fun bits off instead of the "proper" gangsters?

"What're we even watching for?" one of the other hired blades, a pretty, slender man in a hooded black coat with long tails in both front and back, the middle cinched to give him a slightly feminine waist, asked as he rubbed his upper arms.

"Resentful seagulls," Kai responded with a snort, leaning her forearms on the railing and looking off over the lake's surface.

He glanced at her in vague annoyance. "There aren't any seagulls on Makarzia," he grumbled before turning and pacing off.

'Yeah, I know,' Kai thought, rolling her eyes before turning them towards the water again. No seagulls, no doves, no hawks, no pigeons. Makarzia's development and smog had killed off every single species of wild bird that had once called it home, leaving its skies empty of anything but the occasional skyspeeder and the smog.

Well. All except one.

Kai smiled as a sparrow alit on the railing nearby, probably just taking a rest after having been carried out over the lake on the morning air currents. Makarzian sparrows weren't like the ones she'd seen on other planets, especially ventures to various versions of Earth. Those sparrows looked pudgy and fluffy, with their round brown and grey bodies, and she'd never been able to understand why people on those planets didn't seem to like them.

No, Makarzian sparrows were scrawny, scruffy, almost oily-looking. They constantly looked like they were on the verge of falling over dead from sheer bad health. And yet they lived. Smog didn't kill them. The chemical rain didn't kill them. The cold didn't kill them, the heat of the occasional scorching summer didn't kill them. People called them 'feathered cockroaches'.

Kai loved the shit out of them.

'Another day saying "fuck it" to nature, my man?' she thought warmly at the sparrow, pursing her lips and twittering at it briefly. The sparrow hopped to the side, canted its head, giving her a truly perfect 'and just who the hell do you think you are?' look before taking off and flying away.

She watched it go, her heart coming dangerously close to being buoyed. Makarzia couldn't kill the sparrows. They were too tough, too resilient, and just too damn stubborn to die when Makarzia had killed every single other bird it had.

'Fuck you if you think you're gonna kill me either,' she declared silently to the planet at large, before turning and ambling back towards the entrance as the diving siren sounded again.

Soon she was walking through the halls, the windows showing the black water outside displaying various bioluminescent fish flitting by in twos or tens. All artificially introduced, of course, the lake little more than a giant artificial aquarium as far as its life forms were concerned, but at least they lightened the somewhat oppressive feeling of being underneath so much water. 

The chill was gradually fading out of her muscles, but it was enough to make her shiver a little just remembering it. 'Wonder what Sakai would want from me to have someone give Zee some pants?' she mused to herself, before quickly checking her walk as someone came around the corner.

"Oh, hey Mikon."

"Kai," the other woman said with a bob of the head, one of her fox ears twitching.

Kai had no idea whether Mikon was a genemod or one of the other numerous races and species that fell under the general appearance umbrella of "looks like a Human but with animal bits". She was tall, pretty... beautiful even... her dark brown hair pulled back into a long ponytail save for two falls that framed her face and fell all the way to her chest, showing off both the lovely shells of her human-like ears and the large pair of vulpine ears matching the color of her hair that rose from atop her head. Her dress looked like someone had taken a kimono and Makarzia'd the hell out of it, leaving her left shoulder bare, the rest of the arm wrapped in white, the gold-trimmed black folds of the garment showing off a very generous amount of cleavage of very generous breasts. 

Her right arm was always covered by a blue coat she used as a drape, though as if to make up for it most of her left leg was bare, the dress open on that side all the way up to the waist to show off the side-tie of her panties, as well as the strap of a kunai holster, and the sheath of a thigh-high stocking below her knee-high boot. Her swords also rode her left hip, one long and one shorter... Kai had only ever seen her use the long. Her thick, fluffy tail gave a flick as well as she looked the redhead up and down with dark purple eyes.

"I'd heard you'd been picked up as a hired blade."

"Yeah. Honestly thought I'd have run into you before now, been here a week nearly," Kai allowed, bobbing her head.

"I've had other things to attend to. It's getting... messy... out there." Mikon's lips pursed ever so slightly, before she tilted her head a little. "You're ready for tonight?"

"Ayup," Kai responded with a bob of the head.

Mikon smiled. Just a little. "Good. You won't mind showing me, then."

  
  


Kai gave the carbon fiber practice sword a twirl, then adjusted the weighting a little with the control panel nearby, the LED line running up it in place of a groove shifting color slightly. She nodded, deciding she'd sufficiently recreated the weighting of her own weapon before turning back towards the fighting floor.

Mikon had changed into hakama pants and a white top that actually covered everything, though she'd switched to a red-trimmed white fabric drape to cover her right arm. Kai had no such options for fancy sparring gear so had simply removed her coat, boots, and stockings.

There was no bowing or ritual. This wasn't that kind of dojo, and they weren't that kind of fighters. There was a different kind of honor for people that fought and killed and died in the streets.

They just raised their weapons, Kai with a double grip on her weapon up and raised, feet positioned in picture perfect kendo form, Mikon with the left side of her body angled toward her opponent, weapon gripped lightly and one-handed. With a short shout, Kai drove forward, snapping her weapon down, cracking it against Mikon's block, pivoting up and coming down from the right, pushing and sweeping Mikon's sword away for a quick flick towards her shoulder, the fox-eared woman ducking away from it, Kai pivoting and giving a quick rising cut that the other woman easily blocked down and knocked away. Both backed away, resuming stances.

Slowly, Mikon raised an eyebrow. "Were you just trying to show me you know the proper forms?"

Just as slowly, Kai grinned. "Yup."

"Very well." Mikon smiled just slightly in turn, giving her weapon a twirl and bringing it to angle across her body instead. "Why don't you stop trying to impress me, and impress me?"

Kai's grin turned positively feral as she dropped into a lower stance, fingers shifting a little on the grip of her sword and head angling.

_Lunatic Calm - Leave You Far Behind_

Silently this time, with none of the traditional calls or shouts, Kai rushed Mikon, lashing out with a rising slash, already sweeping up and into a downward slash almost before their weapons actually made contact. When Mikon blocked and snapped her own sword to the side at Kai's head, the redhead dropped down into a spinning sweep. The fox-featured woman gave a backwards flip from her standing position as naturally as breathing, barely giving any ground and snapping her practice weapon in short, hard snaps towards Kai's head and shoulders as she came back up.

The human blocked and twisted away from the blows, temporarily on the full defensive, before dropping one hand off her sword as she blocked with it and drove the palm of her other hand towards Mikon's right side. Mikon dropped her hip and moved with the blow, shoving her sword for added leverage to force Kai to topple. The redhead instead dived into a controlled drop and roll, coming up to resume her two-handed grip and launching a flurry of hard snapping strikes of her own.

Mikon's one-handed parrying was practically absentminded in comparison, her tail giving a very nearly lazy flick behind her as she blocked the strikes. Then she ducked as Kai suddenly leapt and spun into a roundhouse kick that very nearly connected, at least passing close enough by to make Mikon fold her ears down to avoid it. She rose into a shoulder-check to the just-landing Kai, knocking her backwards, the redhead once more rolling backwards and springing to her feet. 

The fox-woman circled around to one side, giving her weapon one more twirl as if considering, Kai rolling her shoulders and keeping her place, just letting her feet turn her to keep facing her opponent. This time when Mikon came in it was far more showy than before, her sword twirling in her fingers with every strike, the impacts barely cracking against Kai's blocks (or her forearm and side in two cases), before suddenly Mikon's upper body dropped backwards somewhat to give her the necessary space to turn one of those twirls into a thrust.

Kai just barely hopped back to avoid the practice sword jabbing her right between the tits. Pursing her lips a little, she rolled her shoulders again, then spun the sword down into an underhanded grip, bringing her arm up across her chest, crossing her other arm behind it at the forearm. Then she launched forward, this time aiming hard, short jabs at Mikon's side and leg with the edge of the practice sword, actually using her other hand to deflect the LED-lit practice blade by smacking her palm against the flat. The impacts stung and it felt like she might be at risk of breaking a bone, but she wasn't going to-

"That's enough," Mikon said suddenly, stepping back and dropping her own sword to grip it underhanded, making a sheathing motion at her waist to indicate the session was over.

Kai scowled a little, but then schooled her face back to impassivity, as if getting a bit jaw-clenched over the match had just been a part of the spar. She turned and made her way back over to the weapons rack to deactivate the sword and return it.

Mikon, however, lingered on the floor, drawing her practice sword from her waist and regarding the glowing purple LED strip up the side. "I wish," she said thoughtfully. "That your senseis had actually liked each other."

Kai paused in clearing the settings on the terminal, then tapped the button and turned towards her coat. "What makes you think they didn't?"

"The way you fight. There are two hands on the controls, each one fighting for who's in charge at any given time." Mikon quirked a brow again as Kai shot her a look, and gave the practice sword a slight shake in the redhead's direction. "You don't incorporate your hand-to-hand, you switch to it between using your sword. You switch to it very quickly, but it's still doing two different things. When you're at range there's a moment where you're wanting to go for a gun, because rather than focus on the sword you lean towards it. You're almost at a level of being able to pull off that hand-blocking technique against a real sword, but the problem is that you want a combat knife in your other hand instead of a real blade."

"... Wasn't aware I'd survived all this time being so sloppy," Kai said with forced dryness, tugging her coat on and giving the front a light flap to settle it.

"You're very sloppy... to me. I imagine to the rank and file night creatures who have never seen anything like the ones who taught you, you are a veritable terror." Mikon actually smiled a little again, walking over to set down the practice sword and then walking over to Kai. She remained silent as the redhead tied her boots, waiting for her to rise before she continued. "Do you know what I see when I look at you?"

"Is it a nice word or a naughty one?" Kai snorted.

"Both." Mikon tilted her head slightly, tail lashing once behind her. "I see potential. Potential to be anything and everything. So many are told they can be whatever they want... but I think it's true for you. Your problem, Batta, is that you don't _want_ to be anything yet. You want to survive until you're through whatever is in front of your face, and then you want to survive next. You don't want to be anything but there tomorrow."

"... That's what a slave's life is, Mikon," Kai answered after a long moment, turning away and pushing her hands into her pockets. "That's not something I can help."

"You won't always be a slave, Kai. No, that's not sword mysticism talking," Mikon said in a kinder tone as the red-eyed woman shot her a look. "That's hope. That's belief. A thing like you was not meant to be kept on a chain, and I have faith that you won't always be. But when you are free, and when you get to choose who you are..." One hand nudged Kai back to face her, and the fox-woman tapped her lightly on the chest with one finger. "You're going to have to get rid of this."

"My heart, huh?" Kai snorted. "Didn't figure I had a lot of that left."

"Not your heart. The wall in it." At Kai's raised eyebrow, Mikon bobbed her head. "The wall between the halves of what you were taught. The wall that keeps the real you in. That wall is keeping you from being the warrior you can be and, I think, want to be. Again, not mysticism... it's just written in your fighting. In your face. Eventually, Batta, you must choose... the gun or the sword." Then she smiled a little bit more. "Or figure out how to make your peace with both."

Kai was silent for long seconds, then let out a snort. "Yeah, well, when this mythical, starry-eyed, dreamy day comes, I'll be sure to keep it in mind." She turned, flipping a hand through the air in a wave. "I'm gonna go get some bruise easer and take a nap before the thing tonight. I'll keep an eye out for any sudden miracles to get me free."

"You do that," Mikon replied placidly, bobbing her head again.

Walking out of the dojo, Kai turned down the hall... then leaned back in, squinting. "What the hell is a 'batta', anyway?"

Mikon laughed softly, dark purple eyes gleaming. "Just something one of my teachers used to say. Don't pay it any mind."

Kai eyed her for a moment, then shrugged and left.

* * *

"I was too emotionally immature at the time to see the wonderful gift I was being offered, and that I scoffed at and shrugged off. Even though I know now that accepting it would have derailed so much of the good that came after, there's a part of my heart that will never forgive me.

"Mikon was one of the most remarkable people I ever met. Looking back I understood that she wasn't just a Master because she was an artisan with a blade. She was a Master because she'd mastered herself... she understood who she was, completely and totally. She was living exactly the life she wanted to live because she had found her place in the multiverse, sought it out and then accepted it with serenity and grace.

"By the time I realized she had been offering to take me in hand and teach me, it was too late. The next time I saw her after that night, we were both different people. Experience had shaped us into individuals who no longer had to reach for each other for the things we needed. But in that moment she wanted a student, and I was too bitter and stupid to realize how much I needed another teacher.

"Batta. 'Grasshopper'. Something Makarzia didn't have. But apparently there were plenty of them on the world where she'd trained and learned her art. She was trying to tell me that I wasn't meant to be a thing of concrete and neon, that my place was on a world of grassy hills and ever-blooming sakura trees. I'm still not sure she was right... but she could have been.

"I read this book once. A genemod passed it to a good friend of mine, and she recommended it to me. Whole series of them. Pretty silly stuff. But there's one line from it that's stuck with me all the way until now. 'It is never to be known, what might have been.'

"And ain't that a bitch?"


	6. Interlude 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Kai dreams.

"I had a dream that evening as I slept, before going to the meeting.

"It was pretty memorable, because I hardly ever dreamed. I could probably count all the dreams I'd had since I woke up in that display cell on one hand. Maybe something about what the slavers did fucked with that part of my brain. But I do remember them all. This one was pretty ominous.

"I was standing on a hill. Not like a hill on Makarzia, just a paved-over bump of road, a real hill, covered in grass, except that it was dead. Everything around me was dead. Everything but the birds.

"Because in front of me was this massive leafless tree. It looked like it had been burned in a fire, it was as black as charcoal and the branches were gnarled and twisted, like they'd reeled away from the flames, like the tree had tried to shield itself from burning to death. And in its branches were three blackbirds.

"Two of them were on one branch, side-by-side, but it seemed to me like there was also this incredible distance between them. Pitch black feathers, bright red eyes. And one was letting out these caws, but they sounded like... crying. Like it was dying inside with the pain of loss.

"The other blackbird on the other branch was different... it had little brown patches all through the black of its feathers. But it was making the same cry. This cry of just... absolute pain, and misery, and hollowness, like it was desperate to end the agony of loneliness it was in. It seemed like they were crying to each other, but they didn't even know it, they couldn't hear each other, that they were too far apart even though they were on the same tree.

"The other one... was just silent. It seemed to me though that it was in just as much pain as the other two. That despite having the identical bird on the branch beside it, that it was very alone, and simply suffering it in silence, like it had decided that there was nothing else to do, and that it had just resigned itself to suffering alone forever.

"Then it looked at me. It looked right into my eyes. And I understood it had been waiting for me. It said my name.

"Except that it wasn't my name.

"Not yet."


	7. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Kai is taught a lesson for being happy because then things explode.

December 1, 2992, 00:30 (Local Makarzia time)

"So one more time for me, just to make sure I've got it all."

Sakai smiled at her indulgently, bobbing his head. "The meeting will be in a social club that's in an area roughly between all the involved territories. Most of our men will be in one of our businesses that's within a short run, but they're to stay there unless we signal there's danger. We'll have three people outside, two people inside. You as well as Mikon, will be my inside accompaniment. We'll all mingle for awhile, competing to see who can be the most casual and unconcerned about the entire affair, before we all sit down and start discussing what needs to happen so that we can all deal with the primary issue."

"Somehow this entire week the 'primary issue' has escaped being explained to me," Kai noted dryly.

"Oh, has it? Pardon. It is the Street Demons."

"This new 'gang' that doesn't act like a gang at all," Mikon added with a soft scoff. 

"True, they're more like anarchic terrorists that happen to commit a few profitable crimes while they're at it. They don't care who gets hurt in the process."

"Yeah, come to think of it, I'd heard some buzz about how they were causing serious collateral damage when they busted into an area." Kai frowned. "It's really a big enough deal that it's calling an intergang meeting? That's usually for shit like major lawenoff crackdowns, plagues, major violations of the unspoken code, crap like that."

"It's getting very bad, yes. The Street Demons are destroying businesses, killing civilians as well as affiliated people from our side of things. It's unacceptable... especially in the Kuzahood, where we take care of people." At Kai's soft snort, Sakai grinned. "Yes, yes, think of it as just a pragmatic attempt at good PR all you like, but we've been doing it for over 2000 years... at some point, an attempt to get good press becomes actual tradition."

"Whether the other gangheads care about the civilians in their territory or not, the Street Demons are becoming very bad for business," Mikon spoke up. "They seem to have a grudge in particular against other gangbangers, and it seems very much like they might be leading up to escalating their current hit-and-run tactics. They're chaotic, hard to judge, and there are indications they're incredibly well-funded."

"Definitely sounds like a big enough deal to get all the gangheads around a table I guess. We know who all is gonna be there?" Kai asked as the skiff docked back at its lakeside mooring and they got out, moving to join the rest of the small crowd waiting at the top of the steps.

"In general. I'm sure Horace Allfather is going to be there, as well as Moore... the Transcendants aren't a combat gang, I'm sure she's far more desperate for a solution than the rest of us are. The same with the representatives of the streetwalkers."

Kai suppressed a wince. "Heeeey Pink-neechan's gonna be there, huuuh?"

Sakai smirked at her a bit. "Had a lecture or two, Kai?"

"Or three," the redhead muttered.

"Other than that, everyone with a sizable gang and dealings of any worth is invited, including the new ganghead out of Tailtown," Mikon continued, left hand resting on the pommel of her long katana, right as always covered by her coat.

"Oh, Tailtown's got a gang now?" Kai raised her brows. "Wasn't the last one like twenty years ago or so?"

"Mhm." Mikon twitched an ear purposefully. "Some of the human-dominated gangheads do not care for 'upstarts' from Tailtown."

"More fools they," Sakai declared breezily, causing Mikon to give him a somewhat wry look.

Much of the group split off bit by bit along the way, until only six remained, Sakai, Mikon, Kai, and a trio of biguglies that Kai presumed were the 'outside guard'. The club they were headed for was at a four-way intersection, and the streets around were already littered with... well, biguglies in a variety of other styles, really, reflecting their gang's aesthetic or at least their hiring practices. The trio of Holy Dragon biguglies split off to find a place to stand and sort of politely glower at their counterparts as the rest went inside.

The interior of the club was ritzier than Kai was used to... a lot of dark faux-wood paneling and 'mature' styling. A gentleman's club... one that made at least pretensions of actually being a place for gentlemen and not just a strip club. The smell of cigar smoke was in the air, and Kai fought not to sigh audibly. 'Fuck I miss cigarettes. Please let someone offer me something.'

There were already numerous people scattered and clumped about, mingling casually. Just a nice big social event, nothing to see here. 

"Kai, go mingle," Sakai suggested evenly, tossing her a slightly too calm grin.

"Isn't the purpose of a bodyguard to, y'know, stay by you and guard your body?" Kai asked, quirking a brow.

"Yes but if both you and Mikon hang right over me it makes me look weak. She's enough to guard me for now, danger is more likely to come once the actual meeting begins, just return to me when you hear the gathering."

'Translation, Mikon's tattoo is a prettier color, is permanent, and she earned it, so fuck off and leave me to be guarded by someone I trust until there's the potential for actual killing.' Kai nodded, professionalism perfected by years of Guild work as well as street jobs letting her keep the sourness off of her face as she turned to make her way further into the club, trotting a bit down the very short flight of steps that lead down to the club floor proper. Well, whatever. It was always like that. A Dragon can only trust a Dragon. And she was just a... substitute Dragon.

She very quickly spotted Horace Allfather and casually altered course to give him a wide berth. The huge slab of muscle and red hair was as usual attired in a red suit and black shirt, both of which probably cost more than the nicest speeder the second-richest gang owned. Apiece. He and his similarly-clad mooks, albeit all of them wearing sunglasses and trilbies to enforce a kind of anonymity, looked like they were smoking the priciest cigars and drinking the priciest drinks the place had to offer... at least, she guessed. Probably just to make a point.

She picked out Moore and her pair of Transcendant escorts sort of lurking over in the corner. If she had to guess from the slump of the shoulders and the crinkling around the eyes, Kai would say that Moore was relatively unaltered for the meeting and not enjoying it much. Transcendants, especially their illustrious leader, had very little interest in interacting with the 'Real' without at least a layer of their 'Beyond' washed over it. It must be a big deal indeed if Moore had let herself sober up for the meeting.

And... yup, there was Pink-neechan, Kai thought with a wince, ducking her head and again altering course at the sight of the leader of the SeXXY Bitches, her pink hair falling over one side and brushing across the heart-patterned cloth mask she wore over her lower face, the rest of her attire shades of pink in what could only be called 'punk fashion chic'. Luckily it looked like she was distracted by talking... or arguing, maybe... with a heavily scarred and cybered near-naked woman, wearing little more than a pair of panties, stockings and heavy combat boots, and a pair of glistening black X's over her nipples, as well as a large amount of jewelry, some of it actually wound through and attached to her cybernetics. Looked like Pink-neechan was being guarded by a fairly large and semi combat capable pair of her working girls, both men wearing classy suits that showed off their lean builds and the shiny guns holstered under their jackets. ... Hm, the other woman only had one other girl with her own aesthetic accompanying her, so where-

"Hi!"

Kai had to work very hard to resist the urge to jump or yank her sword out, considering the person she'd been wondering about had popped up in front of her seemingly out of nowhere. Much like the ganghead she obviously worked for, the girl wasn't wearing much... a pair of skimpy black and white panties, one side of the thin waistband knotted to repair them, a ruffled black tubetop over her slight chest that mostly seemed to be held on by a pair of belts she'd added on top and bottom, two different heights of combat boots, and an assortment of straps, belts, and other semi-random decorations and jewelry, including a black leather collar. It showed off a lot of skin with an assortment of scars and little bandages here and there, as well as a couple of rather wild tattoos such as a skull on her shoulder. She looked like she was probably... mid-late teens?... to Kai's eye, with a head of long, very tousled blonde hair and pale blue eyes that might have been pretty if they didn't look slightly crazed.

"S'up 'sup s'uuuuup?" the blonde chirped eagerly, bouncing her hips side-to-side in time with the semi-singsong of it, bumping them against the antiquated-looking autopistol she held in one hand.

"Ah, hey, s'up?" Kai answered in reply, trying to process one of the odder people she'd met recently. Which was saying something, considering her place of residence and line of work.

"Name's Ruri hi how's it going hey I'm bored you wanna fuck?" the blonde continued, crazed eyes sparkling delightedly as she shifted to bouncing on the balls of her feet.

"Uh. I'm... Kai," the redhead replied a bit slowly. "And..." Actually that did kind of sound like fun. However, it really felt like the spirit if not the literal letter of 'don't stick your dick in crazy' applied here. "Hey, maybe after the meeting though?" she proffered. Because bad decisions were okay if she made them off the clock.

"Tssssssssss," Ruri answered, sucking in a breath through her front teeth, before she shrugged. "Okay but I probably won't be as bored then so I'll hafta charge you even though I like you." Then she turned and trotted off without another word.

'... What fuckin' gang are they?' Kai thought curiously, frowning a little as she watched Ruri head to rejoin her apparent boss, and chirp out something that made one of Pink-neechan's blue eyes twitch. She was far from an expert on every gang in the sector, even, but that one seemed pretty wild.

She turned a little as a man with silver skin wearing what looked kind of like a Dragon's suit if someone said 'make the colors really boring' walked by purposefully, heading towards Moore and leaning down to speak to her quietly, with her nodding tiredly and rising to shuffle along with him. 'Huh, that's a Freedroid, isn't it? Don't usually see them out and about, it must be pretty serious after all if they're getting involved.'

Kai tracked the pair as they moved over to a table where a very human-looking droid with pale gold-silver skin, somewhat artificial-looking hair, and a really nice grey suit was sitting, his fingers steepled over the front of his face as he regarded the room with black eyes with green pixel-pupils. 'That must be Adam. Wonder why he wanted to talk to Moore?'

And then Kai's mental train went completely off the rails as she looked ahead again at the couch nearby. "A-... Niobe?" she whispered, for a brief moment ten years younger and more innocent as she saw the large purple-haired woman sitting there.

"It's the kid!" Niobe's golden eyes lit up in apparent delight, the feline ears atop her head giving a twitch. She looked... _exactly_ as Kai had last seen her six years ago, she hadn't aged a single bit, it was practically like she'd walked out the door an hour ago and just gotten a change of clothes. Her jaw-length purple hair was the same, the smooth skin was the same. She was wearing a yellow-lined black jacket with a fur-trimmed hood over a blue and purple one-piece that highlighted her huge breasts, flat stomach, and left most of her generous hips bare, save where they were covered by very tight, very low denim cutoffs. Her legs were sheathed in white thigh-highs and her feet in white and pink high performance sneakers, and the spherical sucker she popped out of her mouth smoked in the club's air, indicating it was actually some sort of intense narcotic. "Damn if it hasn't been an age, girl!"

"Niobe, you're... here." It was all Kai could say, finding herself for once in almost a decade at a complete loss for words. She honestly couldn't describe what she was feeling just then, other than maybe 'overwhelmed'. One of the people that had mentored her, taught her everything, shaped her, that she had thought she was never going to see again, and she was just... sitting there with a huge grin on her face, feline ears twitching.

"Damn straight I am. Hey, Diore, hop up, me and the kid are gonna have a little reunion," Niobe commanded, the slender, youthful-looking man with mouse ears and a tail hopping to his feet to make room, the sleek woman with long purple hair and a different style of cat ears staying put on Niobe's other side.

Kai hesitated, wondering if she was dreaming... and for a moment remembering the dream she'd had earlier, suppressing a shiver at the memory of those cries of pain and loneliness, and only now feeling like maybe they weren't echoing so hard in her own heart. She made her way over, nodding a little numbly to the man who had given up his seat before settling down on the couch as well. "You're on Makarzia, and..." She blinked, basic common sense managing to get through her shock. "And you're the ganghead from Tailtown."

"Damn right I am." Niobe laughed boisterously, tucking the sucker back into her cheek, golden eyes twinkling. "The Geneslicers. We've got more badass ex-military motherfuckers than any three of these other gangs put together. Well, mostly," she amended with a snort, glancing over towards Adam and his entourage, Moore having departed to rejoin her own people. "But yeah kid Tailtown's coming up in the sector."

"I'm glad to hear it." Kai smiled, though a little wanly. "It's crazy realizing you've only been over in Tailtown all this time."

"Shit kid, to think you were out here too, though I guess I should have figured it, once I heard the old man sold that silly bitch." Niobe's expression grew serious. "What about you? He still got you chipped?"

"... Yeah," Kai whispered, bobbing her head. "He still owns me."

"Shit." Niobe rolled her eyes, exchanging a brief glance with the woman at her side before looking at you and resting a hand atop your head. "Hey kid, go ahead and stick around here, huh? Let's have a chat about how we're gonna fix that shit, huh?"

"I..." Kai swallowed, her mouth going dry. And yet she glanced aside as there was a gentle ringing of a bell, and people started to move towards the long table set up in one section of the club. "It's starting."

"Yeah but fuck it kid, Cammy can handle it in my stead," Niobe said with another glance at the other genemod woman, who rose primly to her feet and smoothed out her classy little black dress. Niobe's eyes flicked to Kai's bare stomach, and she shook her head. "Fuck the Dragons, you don't owe anyone shit, let's get your situation figured out."

It was everything she'd ever wanted. Niobe was right here in front of her, real and warm and looking at her with concern, practically demanding they figure out how to get Kai free of the old man. It was almost literally a dream come true, and not the scary-ass, ominous one she'd had earlier, the good kind, the kid-with-hopes kind.

"I can't," Kai whispered.

"Aw, kid, you-"

"It's not about owing. I want to talk to you, about... anything. Everything. But I made a promise to the Dragons. _I_ made a promise," Kai repeated, taking a deep breath and lowering her head. "The old man just sent me out to earn, I'm the one that chose the Dragons, I'm the one that made promises to Sakai about what I'd do. If I don't keep the promises that I choose to make... that's just taking one more thing away from me because I'm a slave. I have to stay true to what I choose to do."

Niobe stared at her for long moments... then let out a soft snort, pushing back the kitty-eared hood and ruffling Kai's thick red hair. "Well, shit, kid. When you're right, you're right." She gave just a light push against the younger woman's head as she stood. "M'proud of you, y'know?" she added nonchalantly, turning to head to the table, flitting a hand through the air. "The coat still looks good on you!"

'I cried for the last time the night I realized I couldn't smell you on it anymore.' Instead of that, Kai just said, "Thanks," and got up, heading for the table as well.

She had a promise to keep.

Kai settled in on the other side of Sakai's chair from Mikon, clasping her hands low in front of herself and trying her best to look mildly respectable. She almost choked a little when Ruri cheerfully waved to her from across the table where she was flanking her obvious ganghead, who was seated next to Pink-neechan... whoooo was now giving Kai an 'a-ha, got you' look. Shit shit shit, no lecture plz tonight was already weird enough. Kai glanced at the Transcendant next to her... he looked like maybe he could take someone in a one-on-one street fight if they weren't armed and he got the drop on them.

"Under the rules established by the Unofficial Business Owner's First Summit, let us call this meeting to order," Horace Allfather declared suddenly, his confident smile surrounded by the thick, pure red of his beard that merged into his hair. Instantly a lot of other faces around the table went subtly sour as Horace laced his fingers and rested his hands on the table; by speaking first, he'd marginally seized control of the meeting. "The issue at hand is, of course, the Street Demons."

"Something needs to be done about them," Pink-neechan immediately spoke up, eyes narrowed as she thumped a fingernail against the tabletop... all ten nails being various shades of pink, of course. "You all may lose one or two people in each 'incident', but I've lost a girl in _every one_! Sometimes more than one! The collateral damage is too much, whether my girls are in one of your places working when they get hit or they're on the street when the violence starts, they're just too at risk! If you don't do something, I'm going to pull them all off the street!"

"Much as I hate to agree with Pink-obaasan here, I gotta back her up on this one," the scarred and cybered woman from earlier added while shrugging dramatically, while Pink-neechan very obviously fought the urge to strangle her. "The Crazy Hos are crazy but we ain't crazy, dig? We're way better set up to fight than her girls but that just sets 'em off harder, and they've got waaaay better gear and are just way better at killing than any of my psycho babies. We'll pull out too, and between her and me we've talked to all the good little street girls'n'boys, they're all in agreement, ya exorcise the Demons or you can go back to getting your sausage dipped and rugs cleaned the old-fashioned way... with your wives."

A palpable ripple of fear passed along the table, Sakai's scarred eye briefly twitching. Then he cleared his throat and spoke up. "I think we all understand the urgency of doing something about the Street Demons without the necessity of such statements, Pink-neechan, Rirorera. You are not the only non-combatants losing people to them."

"Yeah well you start a war with these fuckers and they won't be the last noncoms to die."

Everyone looked over, seeming surprised to see Niobe speak up so firmly. As the newest ganghead to be invited to the Summit, she was probably expected to stay quiet or only venture mild opinions. But her face was grim, harsh even, gold eyes narrowed slightly.

"Because that's what you're gonna get if you step to them, a war. And I'm not talking these little flings we all have in the streets now, couple of people pull blades, maybe there's a shootout between four or six guys, we all go scurrying off when we see the sirens flash. I've seen these types before... the violence just gets 'em worked up, they feed on it, crave it, they'll always seek it out, and escalate whatever you bring against them. We step to them, and it will end with pitched battles in the streets, shit like you only see in war movies, big tough gang punks bleeding out from gutshots crying for their moms while mortars hit buildings."

An entirely different sort of discomfort seemed to be settling onto the table now, split between those who thought Niobe had no place to speak, and those who realized that she was speaking with the voice of experience. 

"What do you suggest we do, Niobe?" It was Adam who asked, sitting in the exact same position he had been at the other table, his voice even, measured, almost emotionless. "So far every attempt at diplomacy with them has failed. I myself have tried three times, and three times I've been sent back to the Golden Cloud to be reborn."

"And if Adam can't have a calm and reasonable discussion with someone," Moore muttered from a bit further down the table, scratching at her cheek above her mask in an awkward, fidgety way. "They just don't seem to have any _drive_ other than the violence... anything else they do is like an afterthought. Theft, territory seizure, rape, they do it all but it's like they just throw it in on top of the destruction and death."

"Look, I'm not saying we do nothing," Niobe said, flicking a hand through the air. "I'm just saying that _when we do_ , we all need to understand what we're getting ourselves into. They're not going to fight by any sort of code, and we're gonna hafta take that into account about how we choose to go at 'em."

"Yes, thank you for the assessment, but I do believe the rest of us have more experience at handling an upstart group of street anarchists, Aer," Horace spoke up again, chuckling jovially as he stared right at her with a smile that reached his eyes in only the nastiest of ways.

The table went silent. Everyone could tell that Something Had Been Said, if not exactly what. Kai watched with dread as Niobe visibly, physically wrestled with the desire to leap across the table and tear Horace's head from his shoulders, death sentence though that would have been at this meeting. Her fingers curled, nails sending spirals of lacquer and woodpress into the air, until with a snarl she stood up and whirled, storming to the door, Cammy and Diore giving the entire table death glares before turning to follow her.

Kai quickly leaned down to whisper to Sakai. "You have to do something, right now, or Horace is going to have complete control of the meeting for good." Sakai said nothing, simply turning his head curiously, before the redhead added, "I don't know how he found out, but Aer was Niobe's slave name."

Sakai's head nodded once, before he spoke up, voice even, "Niobe-san, please wait one moment."

The trio of genemods stopped at the door, one of Niobe's ears twitching, but she didn't, probably afraid that if she looked at Horace again she wouldn't be able to restrain her urge for violence.

"Oh? Something you and your little hired blade have to say, Sakai?" Horace inquired genially, casting his next card: trying to cast aspersions on Sakai for listening to the hired help.

"Yes, indeed." Sakai kept his voice calm, his demeanor suddenly surprisingly mature and serious in contrast to his usual rather foppish behavior. "She was just informing me of the exact nature of the insult you have visited upon one of our brethren. A fellow professional who was invited to this table under a flag of truce... a truce built on mutual trust and respect for one another as equals, else we would not be here. Niobe was invited to it the same as you, and you were the one to violate that trust, and thus the truce." His eyes narrowed slightly. "Leave, Horace."

The big man almost literally bristled as he straightened his back in his chair. "What did you just say to me, bo-"

"Under the rules established by the Unofficial Business Owner's First Summit," Adam cut in smoothly, never moving from his leaned-back, folded-handed position, his voice as steady as ever. "I second the motion to eject Horace Allfather from this summit, on the grounds that he has violated the implicit oath of respect its attendees are due."

Having his own words that he used to seize the initiative thrown back in his face stunned Horace just long enough that it apparently emboldened others, who started to speak up with "Agreed" and "Aye". Despite the man's fearsome and malevolent reputation, by the end of it there wasn't a single person at the table who wasn't staring at him expectantly. After several moments of pregnant silence he rose to his feet, made a show of delicately adjusting his tie as if to declare how not-bothered he was even as he plotted to kill everyone in the room, and turned to stride out.

"I'll see you around sometime, Horace," Niobe murmured as he passed by, golden eyes raising only slightly to meet red ones before tilting her head a little. "Out there."

"I..." He said evenly, almost respectfully, if you couldn't see the death in his eyes. "Will look forward to it."

Once Horace had stepped out of the door along with his pair of mooks, Niobe turned and made her way back to the table, settling back into her chair a bit stiffly, but seemingly calm again.

"Please accept my apologies for Horace's behavior on behalf of the Summit, Niobe-san. It will not be repeated," Sakai said genially... probably in large part because he's now seized complete control of the meeting rather than the marginal control Horace had. "Now, back to the matter at hand. It seems that we cannot confront these Street Demons without risking further collateral damage and a sort of conflict we may not be ready to bring to our streets. I think before we resolve ourselves to such, we should consider other potential options. Discovering their source of funding, see if we can cut that off, see if-"

And then the wall exploded.

The shockwave hit Kai along with a fine particulate matter that had once been faux wood panels and presswood-silicate banners, lifting her off her feet and hurtling her backwards along with everyone else at or standing near the table, scattering them in clumps across the entire club. Kai slammed to the ground on her back with a jolt, her head knocking against the floor and dazing her. Still she pushed through it, rolling to her side, spotting the Transcendant she'd been standing next to laying nearby.

"Hey... hey man," she croaked, reaching out to shake his shoulder without thinking. "You okay?" Then she stared as his head flopped towards her, showing the five inches of wooden debris jutting out from where his nose had been. "... Shit."

"S'uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuup?"

The electronically filtered and boosted voice filled the club, Kai's head whipping towards it and causing a bit of dizziness in doing so. Cold vapor was pouring in through the massive gap in the wall of the club, far too much to be anything natural, completely obscuring everything but the crimson glow of the figure stepping out of it. Her hair was short and as white as the icy mist, angular horns with glowing red optic lines curling around and decorating them jutting from above her pointed ears, the rest of her garb what looked very much like a thin, knee-length dress like a young girl might wear despite being of at least late teenage years, showing off pretty legs and a modest bust, a punk-style variant on a school jacket with detached sleeves worn over it, her voice echoing from the vape mask she was wearing, its red glowlines pulsing with her words.

"Heard you fuckers were talking shit. Came to see you got hit."

Then she flicked a hand forward, an absolute horde of screaming, horned street fighters raging into the club, howling for blood.

* * *

"I had one thought and one thought only on my mind at that point. And for all my talk of keeping my promises, all my ideas of what made me free, it wasn't getting back to Sakai and helping Mikon defend him. My only thoughts were of finding Niobe, getting to her, making sure she got out.

"I had to save my mom."


	8. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Kai kills a lot of people and there is a rainbow on Makarzia.

December 1, 2992, 01:37 (Local Makarzia time)

_ Digitalism - Miami Showdown _

Kai propelled herself to her feet, snatching her sword from its sheath as she did, already slicing, opening up a Street Demon's throat as he rushed at her with a baton. They were already everywhere, already surrounding everyone, a thick crowd of horned, screaming killers all out for blood.

It was like being plunged into Hell on Makarzia.

There was no time to think, no time to strategize, it was all operating on instinct and training. Every time she swung her sword, someone died or wound up wishing they had. Her teeth were bared, red eyes flashing as she cut again and again, Ico's skill and Niobe's rage rushing through her veins with the adrenaline.

Where she went, Demons died.

'Mom. Mom!' She didn't even realize she was thinking the word, would not remember it later. But with every ounce of her being Kai fought through the bloodthirsty creatures in humanoid form for the sake of the one who had raised her, who had shaped at least half of what she was. 

Flesh and bone parted beneath the edge of her blade, Ico's sword, the nameless katana wielded with unthinking soul-deep skill and purpose.

The club was a war zone. All of the attendants and gangheads that had survived were either hiding, retreating, or seemed determined not to go down easy. The sound of guns firing and chattering filled the enclosed space along with the bone-chilling vapor leaking in through the gaping hole in the wall.

Despite her rampage-induced mastery, Kai soon found herself pressed, and staggered as a construction-grade plastic bar struck her on the back of the head and sent her reeling. Then she heard a loud whistle and without thinking dropped to the floor.

The chatter of an autopistol raged from nearby, Street Demons staggering and flailing as they were filled with nine millimeter rounds from an infinite clip. Kai quickly started to shove herself up as bodies fell to the floor, Ruri's hand grabbing her arm and helping haul her up.

"Have you seen Niobe?!" Kai called instantly. Ruri pointed, the redhead following the glance and seeing a Street Demon go flying backwards through the air. Yup. She turned to look for Ruri's group to make sure she could get back, then without thinking whipped out her pocket knife and threw it through the air, the blade disappearing into the Adam's apple of the Street Demon that had been about to hit Rirorera with the claw end of a crowbar.

"Thanky~!" Ruri chirped as if Kai had just handed her the potatoes at dinner, practically skipping off towards her boss, occasionally whipping the pistol back and forth and firing into the chests of Demons that came at her.

Kai turned and began fighting her way through the Demons separating her from Niobe's group, and soon spotted at least two of the genemods... the problem is they were standing over the third. Niobe was literally roaring, her golden eyes alight with either pure rage or some sort of enhancer, clawing open the throats and chests of Demons with her bare hands, Diore flipping and twisting through the air with insane agility as his heels smashed into collarbones or stiffened fingers drove into nerve clusters, piles of dead or unconscious fighters all around them. Cammy lay on the floor on her side, limp and obviously unresponsive, a steadily growing pool of blood under her.

Half-roaring herself, Kai leaped over the barricade of corpses and slashed a Demon across the back before he could rush Diore, whipping around to face outward with the other two.

"Kid," Niobe snarled, unable to keep her raging blood out of her voice. "We need to get the fuck out of here but Cammy's hurt bad, I can carry her but we need someone clearing the way, grab some pistols and start making a path!"

"Can't, the old man blocked me from using guns on Makarzia!"

" _ Fucker _ ! Alright, snatch some up and give 'em to Diore and let's get the fuck out of here!"

Kai nodded, glancing around and spotting a likely place for an exit door, diving forward, sheathing her katana before rolling and snatching up a pair of pistols from the floor. She felt her brain try to rebel as her fingers even came near the triggers, but before the feeling could get too bad she turned and tossed the weapons to Diore, drawing and cutting with her sword even as he snatched them out of the air.

"Chu chu, mother _ fuckers _ !" the genemod shrieked with savage glee as he launched himself from the top of the pile of bodies, firing repeatedly into the masses, either striking and killing or hurting and disorienting, letting Kai finish them off with swipes of her sword. Niobe carefully hefted Cammy into her arms, staying pressed close to Kai, the formidable woman now unable to fight at all as she instead put everything into getting the injured out.

Out of the corner of her eye, Kai spotted a highlighter yellow glow. Making a snap decision, she called, "Diore, bear right!"

"Kid what the fuck?!"

"Just trust me!" Kai snapped back to Niobe as the mouseboy shifted his trajectory of walking ahead and firing, quickly spotting where Moore was sitting underneath a table, hugging her legs and rocking. "Okay, set her down!" Kai added as they got to the table, Niobe doing her best to lay Cammy down without jostling her before whirling and turning to confront the demons trying to press them again.

"Moore! Hey, Moore!" Kai reached into the hood to grip Moore's cheeks over the sides of her vape mask, turning the other woman's head, looking into dull, almost milky eyes. "Hey, Moore, focus! C'mon!"

"Wha? Wha?" The head of the Transcendants blinked once. "Dead yet?"

"No Moore, you're not dead, you're gonna live, but I need you to focus, okay? Focus up for me, what've you got that'll get you thinking?"

That idea actually seemed to get through to the pale-eyed woman, a slightly shuddery finger stabbing the holopad projector on her wrist bracer, fingers manipulating shapes and sequences inside it. The tubes of her vape mask shifted colors, and she audibly sucked in a breath, her eyes turning from milky and dull to shining and slightly glazed. "Yeah okay yeah I'm thinking what do we do Kai how do we live what do we do?"

"Can you get her on her feet?" the redhead asked, gesturing pointedly at Cammy.

"Maybe maybe but she might oh wait gene soldier okay yeah I can do that forty-five seconds I can do that in forty-five seconds yeah," Moore gushed, a hand slipping into her coat and pulling out a vial of yellow fluid and plugging it into an aperture on the bracer, starting more rapidfire manipulation of her holointerface.

"Kid  _ c'mon _ !" Niobe roared as more Street Demons began diverting from the other fights to attack the huddled group, perhaps sensing weakness, or escape.

"Just a little longer!" Kai snapped back, only to jerk backwards a little as Cammy sat up almost the instant Moore jabbed her with the injector on her glove tip, the genemod sucking in a hard breath as if having come up from way too long underwater.

"Iiiii do not feel so good but also fantastic," the pretty purple-haired woman groaned as Kai unhesitatingly started hauling her to her feet, the genemod heavily leaning on the human.

"Yeah that's normal that's fine you'd be dead if you were human but you're not you're fine you're fine you're fine."

"Let's go!" Kai called, the group able to move faster now even with the other two having to cover Moore as well. They'd almost made it to the exit door when a particularly burly demon leaped through the air, right in the opening left by Moore, wielding fire axes in both hands and bellowing like some beast from the Dark, chrome horns already dripping with blood.

While he was still in midair a hand snapped out and clamped around his throat, twisted and jerked efficiently, and then dropped the corpse to the floor. Adam straightened slightly, raising his remaining hand to adjust his tie, a large dent in one side of his face and half his hair burned off to reveal slightly charred silver under his scalp. His other arm ended a bit below the shoulder, trailing a few cables and tubes, some of them dripping a neutral-colored fluid.

Without a word he turned and marched to the exit door, shoving it open and holding it for the others to hurry out through. He emerged and turned, letting it closed, then raised a foot and slammed it against the frame, metal twisting together and effectively locking it. "I will see Moore home from here, thank you," he said as evenly and calmly as he'd spoken all evening.

"Thanks, Adam," Niobe replied as the Transcendant leader scuttled over to hunch in at the injured android's side. The genemod hesitated only briefly before adding, "I owe you one."

"Considering that you saved Moore, I will keep an appropriate level of debt in mind." With that Adam turned and strode off without another word, the silver-haired woman hurrying along with him.

"What the fuck is the deal with those two?" Kai grumbled a bit as she carefully shifted Cammy to get a better angle for helping her walk.

"It's a long story," the feline genemod muttered back, wincing with pain as she pressed a hand over her side. 

"No time for any damn stories, let's get the hell out of here," Niobe growled, prowling forward and carefully glancing out of the alleyway, before beckoning and hurrying along. "The safe house, since Cammy's mobile, let's go."

The path was a long and circuitous one, and Kai worried several times that Cammy was going to pass out again or just bleed out... but even though she apparently wasn't specialized for combat, the slim woman was after all a genemod, and they were specifically designed not to die easily. The path took them on a long route through back alleys, condemned streets, and even the backrooms of a few shops and restaurants, leaving a trail of blood and sweat in their wake.

No tears. Not exactly big cryers, this group.

But eventually Niobe led the way down a set of off-street stairs to a pair of heavy doors, her biceps flexing as she hauled on them, the metal groaning as she hauled them apart with brute force. The horned man inside (thankfully smooth, natural bull horns instead of cyberimplants) briefly leveled a gun at them, but on seeing the group instead reached out, taking Cammy from Kai and hefting her into his arms.

"Fuck, it's a blast bunker," Kai murmured as she half staggered along with the other two. She'd almost thought they were just a rumor... an actual leftover of when there had been countries on Makarzia, and governments that actually gave enough of a shit to provide protection for their citizens in the case those countries pulled some apocalyptic shit.

It looked a lot nicer than she'd expected, really. It was nicer than the old man's apartment at least, though admittedly that was a low bar, all it took was for the cement to have a few less cracks.

More people had emerged into what looked like some sort of main staging/social room as the group came in all came in, most showing some variety or another of animal traits. Most of them clustered around the man carrying Cammy and followed him towards a hallway, one of the only remaining ones a mostly human-looking girl with auburn hair in a long ponytail that curled up at the end into a near-spiral, her skin brown and speckled with darker spots, clad in a sleeveless, short-legged zip-up black bodysuit and simple boots.

"Situation report," Niobe grunted at her.

The girl... fifteen? Sixteen?... yanked her head back from watching Cammy go, then huffed out a sigh. "... It's looking like everyone at the sound lounge is probably dead," she murmured, averting her eyes. "A couple of Slicers might have gotten away but they're in the wind if they did. Same for the ones who were outside... we know Kieran, Leo, and Hipsa are dead, no word on Jule and Joey who were further out. Someone thinks they saw Jule go off with the Freedroids, but... they're not sure."

"... Fuck," Niobe hissed, making her way over to a sturdy metal table and leaning her hands on it.

The girl in the bodysuit looked over at Kai, her nose wrinkling a little, disdain in her deep blue eyes as she demanded, "Why'd you bring a  _ human _ back here?"


	9. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Kai has her spine abused and tells her story.

"Hahahahahaha! Oh god, I still remember just the... the absolute  _ huffiness _ in her voice! God damn.

"I love her so much. You have to understand, I love her down to a part of my soul I didn't even realize I had at that moment. You have no idea.

"December first, 2992, just past two in the morning. I didn't know it, but yeah... my goddamn birthday. The moment I started to become a person."

* * *

December 1, 2992, 02:09 (Local Makarzia time)

"Why'd you bring a  _ human _ back here?"

"God  _ dammit _ !" Niobe half-roared, looking very close to upending the table as she whirled to stab a finger in the girl's direction, golden eyes flashing. "I have  _ told _ you, Ilia, I am tired of hearing that shit come out of your mouth! You do not bring that fucking hate into my house! That  _ human _ is a chipped slave who I guarantee you's had a rougher life than you, because I know the shit she's been through, same as I know yours!" She stabbed a finger towards Kai, adding, "That  _ human _ and another one are the only reason Cammy isn't laying dead on the floor of a fucking bar, is that what you  _ fucking _ want?!"

"I'm sorry! I'm sorry!" At the first snap, Ilia had hunched in on herself, Kai unable to help watching with some fascination as her skin and hair both darkened several shades. "I'm sorry, please don't make me leave, I'm sorry!"

Gritting her teeth, Niobe visibly reined herself in, dragging a hand down her face before sighing. "... Kid, I'm sorry, okay? I didn't mean to yell. It's just been... a long-ass night. No one's gonna make you leave," she continued, Ilia slowly straightening up albeit with her eyes downcast. "This is your home as much as anyone else's. Just don't say that shit, alright? Especially to Kai. She hasn't had it a damn bit easier than any of us." She raised a hand, sighing as she scratched at her forehead. "Could you... go check on the comms please? See if anyone's checked in?"

"Sure, Niobe," Ilia whispered, bobbing her head and turning to head down a different, thinner hallway than the others had gone down. She paused only briefly, tossing Kai a look that was a strange mixture of hateful and apologetic before disappearing.

"No love lost, huh?" Kai murmured tiredly, sinking down into one of the chairs near the table and slumping forward with her forearms on her thighs.

"... No." Niobe pulled over another chair, turning it around to sit backwards, letting her large breasts rest on the back of it. "She's got her reasons, even if I don't consider them good ones. A lot of the Geneslicers do... hell, a lot of Tailtown. I mean, you know I have my reasons too, you were there for a lot of them." She shrugged a bit. "But, y'know, it was the old man. If anything he was the perfect lesson that it wasn't about race, or species. I've been too many places, too many battlefields, to think it's about human versus nonhuman. Shit, plenty of the gene soldiers here know what it is to be abused and used by nonhumans too, often enough their own kind. It's just easier to get pissed at humans and blame them for it all than it is ta see that everything that can think can be a shit." Niobe grinned, just a little. "But when'd I ever go in for easy?"

"Dates," Kai immediately replied, then ducked her head sheepishly.

Niobe blinked... then let out a raucous laugh. "God  _ damn _ I missed you!" She just smiled at Kai... before it faded into a ghost of itself. "This one's not gonna be easy, kid. It's gonna be hard. Damn hard. We lost most of our top fighters and street peeps tonight, kid. Not all of 'em and I kept some of the biggest badasses back just in case of some shit like this, but a lot of what we're left with is not exactly war material. Lotta former sex pets, logistics workers, noncombat specialists, menials and laborers... and not exactly a ton of those. Right now it's looking like the most we might be able to do is hunker down and wait it out, and we-" One of her ears twitched slightly and she glanced over. "Yeah, Ilia, s'up? Any word?"

"Not on our people." Ilia shook her head, then looked at the redhead. "Ah, you're... Kai, right?"

"Yeah, that's me, s'up?"

"The dragon guy that's not actually a dragon is calling, I guess he figured out or heard you left with Niobe."

"Oh there's a fun little addition to the evening," Niobe grumbled, pinching the bridge of her nose. "Shit, with everything that happened, I fucking forgot you started this evening out with the Dragons. How you wanna handle this?"

"I'll go talk to him," Kai said after only a brief hesitation. "My mess, I'll clean it up. Show me, please?" she added to Ilia, managing to remember some manners since it was apparently a dicey situation there.

"Yeah, this way." Ilia turned and led the way back down the long hall, to a room that was set up as a comm center. Not a particularly fancy or elaborate one... there were a lot of visible cables, and a few of the screens weren't even in cases, just taped to surfaces where they would have been convenient. The speckled girl gestured at one of the desks, then leaned her shoulder against the doorway. Apparently that was as far as privacy... and trust... extended.

Kai settled herself down at the desk, tapping the blinking button. Sakai's face appeared on a screen, completely calm, utterly composed, borderline emotionless. "Kai."

'Well he's pissed as everliving fuck.'

"Hey, Sakai. You and Mikon okay?"

"We made it out. We would have done so more handily with your assistance, perhaps in time to save more of our people outside. Would you like to explain why you abandoned your oath of honor to us?"

"I didn't abando-" Kai started, then huffed and rubbed her face. "... Yeah. I wasn't there for you, so I guess... ... look, Sakai, it wasn't that I just ditched you on a whim. Niobe was getting pressed and one of her people was dying, she needed my help more."

"I don't recall you putting Niobe's symbol on your skin as a pledge to fight for her."

"... Yeah." Kai nodded once. "... 'Cause it runs deeper than that." She closed her eyes for a moment. When she opened them, she fixed them directly on his, without flinching. "She's family, Sakai. That's all there was to it."

Sakai was silent for long moments, enough that Kai almost began to wonder if the feed had frozen. Then he sighed, enough slack coming into his features that she could tell they were no longer a forced mask of neutrality. "If she is family then that is the end of the conversation. You chose a higher honor and I will not rebuke you for it."

"Thanks, Sakai. I'm sorry, though," Kai added.

"I understand. I'll put out the word that you're not a deserter. In a day or so you should be able to have the dragon removed at any skin shop in the sector." With that, his hand moved, and the screen went dark. The abrupt closure made it very clear what the unsaid words that followed that were.

'Don't expect to ever wear it again.'

Kai leaned back in the chair for a moment and closed her eyes, absorbing the strange feeling of loss and disappointment that washed over her. Then she took a deep breath and stood, turning back to the door, finding Ilia eyeing her.

"Clever way to get him out of being ticked at you, I guess," the younger woman said after a moment, shrugging a little.

Kai just looked at her, settling a few things in her own mind. "... If Niobe's not family, I guess I have no fucking idea what family is," she finally said, brushing past the slightly shocked-looking girl and heading back down the hall.

Back in the main room, Diore had reappeared, now gesturing to a device with two handles and a curved main part that looked like several metal bars with different metal wires wrapped around them. "Look, we really should get a medisurgeon in here just to be sure, but it'll work on her, promise, we installed a regulator and she'll only lose feeling in half her face for like, at most a day. ... Ten days max."

"Uh." Kai stopped, blinking. "If I'm the 'she' in question could we back the fuck up?"

Niobe glanced over at Kai, then picked up the device and waggled it a bit, Diore making a low worried noise in his throat as she did. "It's a slave chip bricker. We use it a lot on gene modded peeps that haven't had theirs removed yet because they escaped or we bought them out or whatever. Most of us have better shielded spinal cords than humans so the beam's a little stronger than it needs to be to make sure the chip's inert, I had the tech yahoos make sure it'd be safe to use on you."

Kai found herself staring at the device. Very intently.

Niobe was holding freedom in her hand. 

"That's... a really big crime you're talking about, Niobe," she said slowly, just trying to get her mind around it in part.

"So's keeping a private army of gene soldiers, since I lost most of my other big crime may as well replace it with another one, get over here," Niobe replied, patting one of the chairs.

Kai took two steps toward the chair before she halted. "... Wait, Niobe, what about Zee?"

"God DAM-" Niobe started, slapping a hand against the back of the chair, then taking several steadying breaths. "Kai. I am sorry. Zee is a tomorrow problem, and I can only deal with tonight problems right now. I-" She took a shakier breath, raising a hand to gesture a bit with one finger. "I swear to you, I will do something about Zee as soon as I am able. As  _ soon _ . But for at least a little longer the old man will think you're still working for the Dragons. I need all hands on deck. ... I need  _ you _ ," the big woman added a little desperately. "Just please. Sit down and let me brick that shit."

Kai stared at her for long moments. Then she nodded once, moving forward to settle in the chair, starting to draw her hair forward over her shoulders. "Fine, but you get that I wouldn't take that kind of cheapass promise from anyone but you, right?"

"Yeah, kid, I get it," Niobe said, smiling just a little despite her obvious exhaustion. 

"She prooobably needs something to bite down on," Diore murmured, giving Kai a sheepish grin as he said it.

"Seriously? Um, shit," Kai muttered as Niobe went digging in her jacket and came up with something... suspiciously perfect for biting down on. "Are you fucking kidding me?" she asked, looking at the bit gag, then for some reason thinking to glance at Diore, who'd gone rather pink-cheeked. "... Hoookay, whatever the fuck works I guess," she muttered, letting Niobe press the padded metal bar between her teeth before leaning forward further. She tried not to jump as she felt cold metal press against the back of her neck.

Niobe held an open hand down to her. Swallowing, Kai brought one of her own up to grip it. 'It's fine, it's fine, it's fine, it's just a little pain, it's fine.'

And then the world turned into agony. 

It turned out there was no such thing as a 'little' pain when sending a focused charge into a device designed to regulate your thought patterns and deliver electric shocks into your spine. Every single nerve in her body was suddenly lit up like Dragontide lanterns left to burn too long. In the two or three braincells that weren't completely on fire with pain, Kai wondered if the old man had simply never shocked her to the chip's full limit, or if this was some sort of overload, the device's last torment on her as it was destroyed.

And then she was slumping, shuddering, fighting not to sob. Her jaw opened, the bit dropping free and bouncing off her thigh before clattering to the floor. She slumped back in the chair, unable to stop a whimper from escaping her throat as she trembled a little. From the way people were standing, it looked like it only took a second... it had felt a lot, lot longer.

'It's fine, it's dead, it can't hurt you anymore, it's fucking dead, they killed it,' Kai thought, squeezing her eyes closed, a few tears pressed out despite having thought she was long past that.

"Are you..." Ilia had reached out a hand almost reflexively, her fingers curling back before they made contact. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah." Kai forced a smile as she looked at the ponytailed girl, despite her voice being a hoarse raspl. "No big."

"Kid." Niobe snapped, then held up her index finger. "Fingers."

"One. Water, please."

Diore immediately handed her a bottle, and Kai guzzled it down, the liquid feeling almost painfully cold on her raw throat. She didn't think she'd screamed that loud, but then her whole body felt sort of scorched.

"Can you pull a trigger, kid?" Niobe asked a moment later, folding her arms under her chest.

Kai looked up at her for a moment, then nodded firmly. "Yup. I'm good. Let's get it done."

"Niobe she  _ really _ ought to lay down for at least a few hours," Diore urged.

"None of us have time to rest, anyone who's not bleeding out needs to be working this. Ilia, go grab a pair of Placidhearts from the armory." Niobe watched the younger woman go, then looked back to Kai with a pained expression. "Believe me, kid, I-"

"Don't. It's fine, I get it. I told you, I'm alright, I'm good to go. It only hurt while it was happening," Kai assured her. 'It just hurt so much that even thinking about it makes me wanna cry a little, but no big.' 

Niobe hesitated briefly, then added, "Okay, we do have time for one thing. Gimme the jacket," she said, beckoning. "Then go get cleaned up and steal some clothes from someone. You've got Cammy's and probably a dozen other people's blood all over you, I'm not sending you out like that."

Kai quickly found the locker room and cleaned up. At least the bunker's hot water heater was working, and the first hot shower she'd had in a long time went a ways towards making her feel human again. Rifling through the lockers, she found a long-sleeved, high-collared, midriff-baring top and some tight black form-fitting pants that rode just a little low on the hips. "Well, I look  _ slightly _ less like a working girl now," she murmured to herself as she redid her boots, yanking the laces tight, borrowing someone's brush at random to yank it through her hair so that it was some vague semblance of under control.

As she emerged into the staging room, she caught the sleek sniper rifle Niobe tossed to her, unable to help feeling the design was slightly 'Bebby's First Death Machine'. She kept waiting for that feeling of 'You can't you can't you can't', as she handled it, eyeing the virtually idiotproof autotargeting scope, but it never came.

"I'm assuming you haven't been able to keep up with your marksmanship due to the old fuck's idiocy, so thus the idiotproof sniper rifle," Niobe declared, Ilia standing next to her holding an identical one.

"Yeah, figured. Who you want dead, Boss?" Kai asked, murmuring a thanks as Diore settled her cleaned coat around her shoulders and she slipped her arms into it.

"Anyone that tries to fuck with Tailtown. We're a little outside of it, but get over there, get yourself up on a roof and make yourself and your bang-bang nice and visible as a sign that we are not to be fucked with." Niobe glanced aside. "Ilia, you go with her and do the opposite, keep yourself out of sight and watch her back, make sure no one fucks with her while she's making sure no one fucks with us."

Ilia hesitated for only the briefest of heartbeats before nodding. "You can count on me, Niobe."

"I know I can, kid. And hey," Niobe added, shoving some cred bills in Kai's pocket as she passed. "Get yourself a foodbar and anything else you need. You're gonna be there 'til sunup."

"Gotcha."

It was a quiet walk over to Tailtown... neither Kai or Ilia had any idea of what to say to each other or where to start, it seemed. They both said more to the shopkeeper whose store was at the bottom of a three-story building than each other, explaining the situation, Kai buying a pack of cigarettes, lighter, a foodbar, and a sixpack of canned water. Shortly after she was pacing back and forth along the edge of the roof, three of the cans lined up in front of her, rifle slung across her front as she bit pieces off the food bar.

Occasionally she raised the rifle to check through the scope, eyeing people on the street... not that there were many. It looked like news of the massacre at the club had spread, and most people had decided to get in off the streets, even the night creatures knowing better than to be around right now. She spotted a few genemods on roofs similar to her, exchanging a wave with them here and there.

She tried not to eye the hefty HC unit where Ilia was crouched with the other three cans, her skin and hair both having turned as black as her bodysuit, nothing but the whites of her eyes, always fixed on Kai. The redhead paused at one point to pull out the pack and tap one out, lighting up and taking a puff before saying, "So?"

"So... what?" Ilia replied in a grumpy tone.

"So you've been staring holes in me for the last half hour. If you've got something to say, you may as well say it, we've got a fair number of hours left to go out here."

Ilia was quiet for long enough that Kai thought she might have simply decided to ignore her. But finally she said, "Do you know what a Faunus is?"

"Kinda-sorta. I know a guy in the Guild that I think I heard someone say is a Faunus."

Ilia shifted in place a little. "And what do you think of him?"

The redhead snorted softly. "I think he wants to fuck my brains out."

Ilia pursed her jet black lips. "And what makes you say that?"

"Him telling me so. Directly. Repeatedly."

"... Oh."

"I dunno, Grey's got... a hell of a mixed reputation," Kai said into the silence that followed. "But if you're asking what I think about him not being human, well I... pretty much don't," she said after a moment, shrugging. "I grew up in the Guild. Humans are still the majority there but not by much. Nonhumans are just an everyday thing, I can't recall it ever making a difference to me."

"So... I guess you would? Y'know. ... With him."

"I might, it's crossed my mind more than once. You gonna get to the point of the chip on your shoulder or are we going to discuss my extracurricular sex life all night?"

"You'd have a chip on your shoulder too if you'd been through what I had," Ilia muttered.

"Mine was in my neck, remember?"

"... Right." Ilia sighed and looked aside. She was quiet for a bit again, arranging her thoughts. "When I was born my parents were really hopeful, because I was... 'passing'. No tail. No ears. Nothing that yelled 'Faunus'. They thought I had a chance to get a better life in human society. They worked in a Dust mine... ... which probably isn't what it sounds like to you... ... Anyway. They barely made enough to get by, but they still scraped and saved and worked harder to save up money to send me to a private school in Atlas. The big floating city above ours, like heaven drifting in the sky," she said in such an abjectly bitter tone that it could only come from amidst the shards of a shattered dream. "I had to learn to control my color changes, but I passed for human, and I went to that clean, fresh, high-end school with all the human girls. And I listened to their Faunus jokes... and I laughed at them. And I told my own. And we all laughed."

She fell silent again, and in the silence Kai could read the truth easily enough. That at some point the jokes had stopped being jokes... that it had been easy to start looking down on all the po' Faunus down in the lower world.

"Then one day... in the hallway... there's a news report playing." Ilia shifted the rifle a little on her lap, obviously having trouble keeping her eyes turned towards the street to watch like she knew she had to. "... The Dust mine collapsed. And they were laughing. My frie-... the human girls... they were laughing about it. And I knew my parents were dead. I was staring at the screen and I knew my parents were dead. And I turned bright blue right there in the hallway, because I couldn't keep the agony I was feeling off my skin. ... I'm just standing there... tears on my face... skin blue... all of them staring..."

"... Guess school didn't go so well after that," Kai said into the silence that stretched afterwards.

Ilia snorted, something almost like amusement in it. "No. But at least I got to break those human girls' smug laughing teeth before they kicked me out." She shifted again, then apparently couldn't resist looking right at Kai. "... So I joined up with a lot of other Faunus who were fighting what the humans were doing to us. Then there was a Dust explosion during one of our raids and I wound up here. And I got lucky enough that Niobe found me and gave me a place a lot like my old one. That's my story. ... Niobe says yours is worse," she added flatly, clearly not wanting to call her beloved leader a liar, but obviously full of doubt. 

And prompting Kai to prove it.

"... You told me yours, so I'll tell you mine," Kai said slowly. She resisted the urge to turn and look, since Ilia was, after all, her secret backup. "So. One day, when I guess I was probably a little younger than you are, I wake up in a slave pen."

Ilia snorted softly. "You're just gonna jump right to that, begin the story there?"

"Hate to break it to you, but there is no 'before that'. That's where the story starts. My story starts. Period."

"... What?" Ilia scrunched her brows a little.

"These slavers had a particular technique. When they install the slave chip, they also do a mind wipe. Makes u-... the slaves... more compliant," Kai explained, her tone taking on the bored, slightly tired timbre of someone who's heard and regurgitated a story repeatedly. "No memories of family that you're desperate to get back to. No prior connections. No ideas of anyone coming to save you. No better life to compare things to. You just wake up in a display cell and your life starts there. Basic language skills, basic knowledge of how to care for yourself, whatever shreds of personality survived the wipe, that's it. You sit there and you accept the cell because you don't know anything else other than people coming by, looking in at you, discussing what you're worth in front of you. Your whole identity is the random three letters they assign you as a name. Kay-Ay-Eye. Kai. Nice to meet you."

She gave that a few moments to sink in before she continued, Ilia now as silent as the shadow she was emulating. "So, one day, this pudgy red-faced dude comes along and buys me. Me and one of the other girls from my lot, Zee. He's this Guild merc who doesn't do his own work anymore, got too big and famous for it, had dozens of slaves of all kinds to do it for him. But now it's down to just two of his best, and me their new student, and the other slave that gets assigned the housework. But he takes me back to this really nice apartment, more like a house really, and he hands me over to those two, Ico and Niobe... well, she wasn't called Niobe then. I dunno if she had a name for herself in mind back then, but I just knew her by her slave name. And y'know, after the crappy little display cell, it was actually really great. The old man was a jerk, but he didn't actually spend that much time with me. Ico and Niobe were training me all the time, taking me on jobs, I had Zee for company my own age... honestly back then I don't think it even occurred to me that there was anything wrong with being a slave. Ico didn't think so anyway, and I didn't know anything else, so eh, big deal if there's a chip in my neck."

Kai turned her head and tried to spit out the sour taste that had grown in her mouth despite the long-missed cigarette. It didn't really work. So she picked up one of the cans, took a few swigs, then continued. "But that shit didn't last. Niobe managed to buy herself free, and really gave the old man hell as she was leaving, and I think that what she said was the first time I really saw or understood the depths of how much she'd always hated her life. ... Cried myself to sleep that night thinking she must have hated me too," she added quietly, feeling it wouldn't be fair to leave it out after what Ilia told her. "But Ico got it through my head that what Niobe hated wasn't me, or her, or Zee, or-" She cut off, because she was certainly doubtful about the rest of what Ico had said, skipping over it to continue. "What she hated was living her life for someone else, not having a choice. That some people were okay with that kind of life, but for some it was worse than death."

She stopped in place, huffed softly. "And I'd understand that pretty fucking soon. Because without Niobe, the old man couldn't send us on near as many big high-paying jobs. So then he sold Ico, and it was just him and me and Zee, and I got to know just how big a buffer Niobe and Ico had always been 'cause he was talking to me direct now. And he was pissed, all the time, like he blamed me for all of it, and he just got angrier that me on my own couldn't measure up to two of the best mercs the fucking Guild ever had. 'Cause first Ico was gone, then the nice apartment was gone, and here we were living in a shithole on Makarzia. And he stopped making any pretense of being a manager or leader and he spent all his time and all our money drinking and whoring and screaming at me to go out and get him more money to drink and whore with. And somewhere in the years of that I just sort of accepted that I was gonna die never seeing the two people who'd raised me again, that when I did die it was gonna be bad and it'd be for the sake of earning my abusive fuck of an owner another handful of credits to get his gullet or his dick wet with, and the most I could ever hope for was keeping the only friend I had left maybe marginally comfortable."

Ilia swallowed. But after a moment, she murmured, "It didn't work out that way, though."

"No. Not so far. And I'm still trying to convince myself it won't, 'cause other than the pain this all feels really fucking unreal. I haven't had anything like a shard of a sliver of hope in years, I don't even know what to fucking do with this now," Kai admitted, lowering the rifle after checking another civvie walking down the street. "But it's not over because Zee's still in that bastard's hands, and now I've got Niobe's expectations and the lives of a bunch of people on my shoulders."

"You could just walk away," Ilia murmured, almost as if prompting the other woman. Unspoken but heard was the 'You're human, they're not, do you really care?'

"Fuck that," Kai replied simply to both the aloud and unspoken parts.

Eventually Ilia asked the question they both knew had to come at some point. "So. Do you think your story is worse than mine?"

Kai didn't answer that immediately. Instead after a moment she decided to sit down on the edge of the roof and let her feet dangle off the side. Not exactly the toughest position to be in, but she was getting the feeling she was a bit of a tiger rock at this point. Maybe the Demons had killed themselves out back at the intergang meeting. She flicked her cigarette out into the street and finished off her can of water before saying anything.

"I didn't tell you my story to play trauma competition, Ilia. I told you because you told me yours, and because I think Niobe wanted me to." She looked down at the streets below, starting to very slowly dry after all the recent rain. Hm... leggings were thin but they were kinda warm. Nice. "I'm not gonna measure my pain against yours. I've got no measuring stick for it anyway. Knowing how much it hurts to lose parents is mostly just a general concept to me, I've got no way to make it real or solid. Pretty much the closest thing I've got to a mom asked me to take care of her people, so I'll die doing that if I have to and that's the only thing I've got room to care about right now."

Ilia was quiet for the rest of their time on the rooftop. When the sun started to filter through the rooftops, Kai tiredly collected the empty cans and, without really thinking about it, stuffed them in her dimensional pockets. Ilia followed her back downstairs without a word, two guys entering the store carrying rifles just as they were exiting the stairs.

"Kai?" the one in the front asked, his skin leathery and teeth sharp, a thick fringe of feathers serving in place of hair.

"Yo," the redhead answered, just a bit warily.

"We're your relief, Niobe says head back to the bunker and get some shuteye."

"Cool. And you're?"

"Buzz," he answered, giving her a wide, sharp grin.

"'Spec', Buzz," she said, if tiredly, clasping his hand and pulling him into a shoulder-bump, then doing so for the dog-eared man beside him, Raoul. "Have a good one, guys."

Kai let her head slump a little as they walked along the sidewalk. She almost jerked a little as Ilia reached out to snag the arm of her coat, turning towards the younger woman. "Yeah, s'up?"

"Hey. Um. I just... wanted to say..." Ilia murmured, her eyes downcast. "I wanted to say that I'm sorry. About earlier tonight, and how I acted. I... I don't know which of us had it 'worse' or anything, but... I don't think you had it better than me. And I assumed you did because you were a human, and... and I'm sorry."

"It's not a big deal," Kai replied, smiling some. "It's just some rough words, I've had a lot worse, trust me."

"It feels like a big deal to me!" Ilia blurted, then turned a little pink... all over. Which Kai was unable to not find charming. "I... it's a big deal to me," she whispered. "And I just... wanted you to know I really am sorry."

Kai looked at her for long moments. Saw how young she was, how hurting, how raw and how vulnerable. And she realized how long it had been since she herself had a hug. Zee hugged her sometimes, and every time she'd gotten one, she'd really needed it. And she now realized this angry, raw, over-her-head girl needed one.

So she did.

Ilia squeaked softly as Kai wrapped her arms around her, eyes going wide and skin and hair going a bit more pink. Then her colors settled a little, hands slowly coming up to rest on Kai's back.

"Whatever we are, whatever we were, we're in this together now, okay?" Kai whispered. "That's all that matters. I'm gonna see this through with you and get it done, got me?"

"... Yes," Ilia whispered, sniffling just a little as her arms tightened around the other woman. "I believe you."

* * *

"Ilia Amitola. My Rainbow.

"The very best, the most precious, and the most wonderful little sister in the whole entire multiverse.

"And I got her for my birthday."


	10. Interlude 3

"I'm never going to be able to really express the effect Ilia had on my life.

"I know I changed her too. I hope for the better overall. Probably the worse in some ways. But hopefully better in the ways that count most.

"I like to think she smiled a lot more after I got to know her. That she moved a little easier, that there stopped being a feeling like she was always waiting for some other shoe to drop. Maybe it's arrogant, but... I think she was happier after I came into her life.

"I know I was a damn sight happier with her in mine. I mean, it's probably unfair to Zee to say Ilia was the best little sister in the world, considering the six years Zee supported me, but...

"Well, fuck it. A big sister's allowed to have a favorite. Apparently. Supposedly. ... Ah fuck it yeah I suck oh well. But Ilia just straight-up changed my life.

"I mean, not overnight, no. That, uh... that took awhile."


	11. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Kai has conversations at inappropriate times and is told her spine will be abused some more.

December 8, 2992, 01:49 (Local Makarzia time)

"Boy if you don't fucking tell me who your boss is I will ventilate you so thoroughly you will be both a door and a window."

The Street Demon tied to the chair smirked through his split lips, one of his smooth chrome cyberhorns dented and bent slightly downward, the edges around it bleeding. "I told you. Red Tide."

Kai rolled her eyes, then pressed the large caliber handgun a little more firmly against his forehead. "Not her jolly pirate nickname, you degenerate horny fuck, I want her actual name. Something tied to an ID. An address where I could send a pipe bomb would be real swell."

"Doesn't have one," the captive asserted.

"Which?"

"All of the above, bitch."

"Look you reeeeeally need to tell her what she wants to know," Ilia asserted from nearby, raising her hands and waggling them a little in the air. "She's not in a good mood. She'll do it, for reals."

"The fuck is this, 'good cop bad cop', seriously?" the Demon scoffed.

"No you pissant motherfucker this is 'trained terrorist and amoral sociopath' and you have until the count of five before I get tired of just telling you about it. One-"

There was a crash from the front of the building, and the Demon's lips curled into a bigger smirk. "Five."

Kai glanced towards the front of the building, gave a small 'tch', and pulled the trigger.

Ilia flinched just a little bit at the sound of the handgun's report battering them in the close quarters, but was already starting to walk forward, unhooking her unique little weapon from her belt as Kai holstered her pistol and loosened her katana in its sheath. "Welp."

"Hey, he said it, not me." Kai settled into the doorway, looking at the long, wide hallway ahead, and rolled her shoulders. "You ready?"

"Let's get it done," Ilia replied evenly, flicking the sectioned weapon out and retracting it tightly into a rigid fencing foil.

_ Daniel Deluxe - Firewall _

Street Demons began streaming in through the opposite doorway, and Kai and Ilia rushed forward, weaving back and forth in front of each other. Kai slashed the throat of the first Demon and then ducked to slice another's knee, Ilia darting in above her to pierce into a third's chest with her own blade.

"You know you really could stand to have a cutting edge on that thing," Kai noted almost idly as she rose and sliced up and across the chest of another Street Demon, sending her dropping back in a shower of blood.

"We're discussing this  _ now _ ?!" Ilia half-snapped as she twirled up and over a gunshot from one of the Demons in the back, landing standing on a Demon's neck, tightening her feet and twisting her body hard as she extended her weapon into whip mode, slicing it across the face of the one with the gun.

"I always forget when we're back at base," Kai murmured distractedly, twirling her sword to hold it underhand and punching a Demon in the throat and then following the blow through by spinning and clipping his artery with the edge.

"Look it's more useful when I've got Dust, okay?" Ilia backflipped over several more Demons and jabbed one in the spine, leaving her to collapse before whipping around and jabbing the point into another's eyesocket.

Kai rose to her feet, glanced around, and listened. Then she shrugged and gave her sword a hard snap down, flinging most of the blood off of it and onto a writhing Demon's chest and face. "You know, if you wanted to learn to use a regular sword, I could teach you."

"Really?!" Ilia perked up, blue eyes sparkling a little, and her specks briefly turning orange. Before she cleared her throat into her fist and shook her head. "No, I'm good, I've already got my style figured out pretty well."

"Suit y'self. Well, let's rob these fuckers and get back to base. Yeaaah quite whining if you didn't want to get stabbed in the spine and robbed you shouldn't have fucked with me."

"Us."

"Did I not say 'us'? Swear to fuckin' Christ I thought 'us'."

As the two of them strolled out of the abandoned restaurant, Ilia scratched one of her specks. "Who is he?"

"Who, that fuck? Dunno, they don't even give themselves nicknames half the time if they're not particularly glowing and compensating."

"No, the 'Christ' guy."

"Oh. Iunno, I think someone from Earth, like one of their..." Kai scratched her neck tiredly and tried to remember the word. "Presidents? I think he's like related to that other one, Jesus, they get mentioned together sometimes. It's one of those bits of Earth slang that's just propagated across the multiverse, better not to think about it."

"Why does everyone say that about Earth slang?"

"Because Earth is fuckin' weird, use context clues like everyone else and accept the memes."

"Hey. Hey, Kai." Ilia snagged at the redhead's jacket sleeve and tugged it. "Let's get donuts."

Kai squinted, turned her head ninety degrees upward, eyed the sky. "Huh. Shit, it is almost the donut hour. Okay but you're helping me carry some back to the bunker, 'cause if people smell half-decent donuts on us and we didn't bring any back our lives aren't worth squat."

  
  


"We're losing."

"Well that's a really fuckin' mean way to respond to donuts, Cam," Kai muttered around the semi-warm glazed ring stuffed between her teeth.

"Oh do shut up, Kai, at least occasionally, maybe at least when your mouth's full." The long-haired genemod rolled her eyes. Nevertheless she snatched a donut out of the box and munched it pensively before continuing. "They're beating us down." She activated the holoprojector settled in the center of the table, projecting a city map and gesturing at all the red dots. "While not giving us anything. We have no way to accurately measure their numbers but they certainly don't seem to be going down. Some of their people are armed with pipes and shivs, some of them are armed with advanced tech. We have no idea whether the 'elites' we see are part of a leadership or just their best on the ground troopers. We don't know anything about them, and that's going to cost us this war before it ever breaks out in full."

"Kai, you get anything out of that shiny enforcer you jumped?" Niobe prompted.

"El zilcho, as usual." Kai rolled her eyes, tilting her chair back a little and folding her arms over her chest. "They don't obey any rules but daylight but fuck if they aren't goddamn loyal to each other."

"Any of the other gangs having better luck?" Niobe asked with a glance at Ilia.

"They're monitoring comm traffic or  _ something, _ " Ilia said bitterly, flipping through handwritten reports from her compatriots in the comm room, then tossing them aside and flopping forward on the table, resting her chin on her folded forearms. "Every time we're on a call with another gang or even some of our people for much longer than a minute or so, they hit one of the relay centers and bomb it to crap. Call drops."

"And no one in any gang does business except by video call, anything else is just too fuckin' effortless to fake," Kai scoffed. "In fact if they're good enough to trace what call center the calls are routing through they'd damn sure be able to fuck with us if we started texting."

"I'd wonder about starting word of mouth but most of the working girls are still off the streets," Niobe muttered, folding her arms. "Diore, any word on Pink-neechan?"

"She's still in mourning," he murmured. "I don't think she knows what the hell to think about Rirorera sacrificing herself to save her."

"... Fuckin' crazy ho," Niobe huffed, although she somehow made it sound more like a compliment. Considering.

"But the working girls have gotten incredibly cautious anyway so we can't count on that," Cammy cut in. "Listen, right now we need two things if we're going to have any hope of coming through all of this. Communications, and capital," twitching first one ear and then the other with the words as she held two fingers up. "We need a communication method or we're going to fall apart completely and never even notice it, and we need capital to do... anything."

"We lost some of our best revenue generators, both people and locations, when they hit the meeting area on War Night," Niobe grunts, taking the last donut out of a box and then slamming the empty paperboard against a wall, apparently just to make herself feel better. "The violence is slowing business, especially in Tailtown.  _ Especially _ with the Tailtown working girls almost entirely off the streets, they're what draw half the fuckin' business here." She paused, noticing that Cammy's expression had turned appropriately catlike and smug. "Oh, do share with the class your idea that you've been waiting to dramatically reveal."

"Why must you spoil my fun?" The sleeker feline genemod pouted, then shrugged and grinned, tapping at the hologram of the map to change the markers. "I've been charting. Every time they hit a comm center, they then hit the nearest gang-operated location. I guess blowing up an unmanned relay center just doesn't rile the juices enough for our little cruelty addicts. So I've figured out that if we can make a call that reroutes through this relay station here, the gang location they'll hit is almost certainly... this one," she added with a poke.

Kai sat up, growing more attentive. "Shit, that's one of Horace's high end 'rub and a tug' places." At several glances, and Ilia's specks going pink, she shrugged. "I turned in a job to him there once."

"You are absolutely correct though. And one of the benefits of this particular  _ salon _ is that Syndicate members get either heavy discounts or free services. Now, there's a much less-known Syndicate facility here," Cammy continued, tapping another nearby building. "Because it's not a business facility, it's a private one. One of Horace's personal garages, and heavily guarded by a number of his enforcers. But what do you think those enforcers will do when they get the call that the salon is under attack by Street Demons?"

Niobe snorted. "Go racing right over there to save their favorite girls, hoping that from then on the handjobs will be extra enthusiastic."

"Bingo~!" Cammy chirped, completely ignoring that next to her Ilia was hiding her face, which didn't help since she was pink down to the tip of her ponytail. "And this is relevant because I have intel that Horace has recently acquired this." She tapped one of the emitter's controls and gave a particular flick of her fingers, switching the map to a view of a streetspeeder. An extremely high-end streetspeeder. It looked like someone had sculpted a coral reef into something symmetrical and polished it molecular-smooth, turning it into a gleaming construct of white body and white gold rims, with an almost pinched, angular front end that made it look like a cross between an arrowhead and a bullet, overall seeming beautiful and deadly. "Everyone, I give you the Morningstar FBS."

"This is your plan?" Diore asked, quirking an eyebrow. "Steal Horace's car?"

"I do beg your pardon, Lunch," Cammy replied with a haughty sniff. "Do you think I'd put us all at risk for a few thousand credits, or even a few tens of thousands of credits? The Morningstar FBS is not a car, groundspeeder, whatever you want to call it, it is  _ the _ car for displaying opulence, status, and flaunting wealth. There are only ten in the entire multiverse, and they're the very best there is in engineering, comfort, security, and anything else you could name."

"Exactly what kind of money are we talking here?" Niobe asked. Unnoticed to either of them, she and Kai sat forward and rested their clasped hands on the table in the exact same way.

"I'd rather not just blurt it out in the open like this. Let's just say that I already have a buyer lined up who will pay us  _ extremely _ well for the Morningstar, and more than that, has already passed along this extremely rare, extremely expensive factory default keyfob," Cammy added, holding up a slender black item the size of her thumb. "So we'll have no trouble bypassing the Morningstar's legendary security and driving it right out of Horace's garage."

Kai looked at the keyfob. Looked at Cammy. Looked at the keyfob again. Then lowered her head and pinched the bridge of her nose. "You already took the fucking job," she muttered. "And accepted something from the client that probably cost more money than we've got, on the idea we'll be able to deliver."

Cammy opened her mouth, then closed it, expression going sheepish and cat ears laying flat as Niobe and Diore glared at her and Ilia buried her face in her hands. "... There was a very small window in which to accept the job," she said quietly, biting her lower lip.

"Well. Guess we're jacking Horace's ride then." Niobe crumpled up the napkin she'd just finished using and rebounded it off Cammy's head as punishment. "Which leaves the issue of communication to cover." She scratched at the side of her neck, then mm'd. "Hey, Cam, remember the Gulmorra Peninsula campaign?"

Cammy's ears lay flat again. "Oh, Niobe, no one who was at Gulmorra is going to like that idea."

"I'm not thrilled either, but desperate times. And we won't go anywhere near as invasive, not that we could even if we wanted to, the tech here's way more surface level." At Kai and Ilia's questioning looks, Niobe shrugged. "Psycomms. Cyber implants in the neck that let you do nonvocal communications. You implant stronger ones in select people so they can act as 'hubs' that link up between each other. Everyone sends through their closest hub and the hubs chain one to another to get it back to base. Anyway, anyone who doesn't want the implant, tell 'em they're on their own recognizance for doing street patrol, we ain't forcing anybody but this is what we've gotta do for anyone willing to be part of the organized fight."

"Shit, I thought I was done with getting my spine abused," Kai muttered, absently rubbing the back of her neck, feeling the faint bump of the week-dead slave chip.

"Sorry, kid, but at least this will be a good opportunity to get that thing the fuck out of you." Niobe looked at Ilia. "Lzrd, you're the most familiar with our comm protocols. I'm gonna need to ask you to be a hub, if you're willing."

Ilia hesitated half a heartbeat before nodding eagerly. "If that's what you need, Niobe, then I'll do it!"

"Great. Both of you head to the infirmary and get the surgery done. We'll try to pull this shit off tonight, if we can get it all together."

* * *

"I wonder if I'd have done anything differently if I'd realized that was going to be my last job for a good long while.

"I can't think of anything. I mean, without somehow going in with foreknowledge of what else would have happened. It just seems weird sometimes that it was the last big job I went on before everything changed.

"My life. Ilia's life. The lives of a lot of other people really. And here we were just stealing a car and rolling with the bullshit thrown at us, no big deal, just another job stealing a ritzy speeder.

"Maybe the only thing I'd change, knowing it was the last one before everything changed forever, was... I'd have tried to have more fun. I wouldn't have taken everything so damn serious. I'd have taken some time to laugh, to enjoy myself. But maybe the me of before that job just wasn't the sort of person.

"I was within forty-eight hours of needing to get to know a whole new me, and I had absolutely no clue."


	12. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Kai fails to observe proper bunkhouse etiquette.

December 8, 2992, 12:01 (Local Makarzia time)

_Tink. Tink._

The slave chip made soft clinking noises against the inside of the little glass tube as Kai turned it back and forth in her fingers. She was standing on the rooftop of one of the taller buildings near the bunker, and as always when out during the day, had a vague feeling that she didn't belong in the sunlight... that Makarzia, with its steel monoliths and neon gone dull and lightless, just wasn't quite right.

But it was her feeling and hers alone.

For ten years the chip had sat in her neck. It had influenced her actions both subtly and directly, either urging her to push towards things she'd been told to do via the app in the old man's comm, or locked her down with a sense of wrongness whenever she tried to do things she'd been ordered not to do with same.

Just to be sure, as she often had over the past week, she lowered the vial and used her other hand to slip her gun out of its holster under her jacket, shifted it in her palm, let her finger rest on the trigger. No sense of her brain screaming at her that she couldn't, that she wasn't allowed, that she had to put it down and put it away.

Because even if the chip hadn't been fried... it was out now. It was resting in the vial, separated from her by a layer of glass. She holstered her gun, then once again lifted the vial and turned it around once more, looking at the black surface with its hint of char on one side, the little metal tines, wide ones at top and bottom to attach to her vertebrae, thin in the middle to slip through and attach to her spinal cord.

_Tink. Tink._

Kai drew her arm back and threw it out into the city as hard as she could.

She watched it spiral off over the street, towards the buildings beyond. It caught just a little of Makarzia's eternally wan sunlight, flashing once before disappearing from her sight.

"Fuck you," she whispered softly, taking the cigarette from her lips and tapping the ash off, the words fogging on the cold winter air.  
  


"It feels different."

Kai stared at the bottom of the bunk above hers, hands resting on her stomach. She considered asking what Ilia meant, but that seemed silly, considering. "No it doesn't, it's just in your head."

"No it's in my _neck_ and it _feels_ different!"

"Ilia, they replaced a vertebrae. Vertebrae don't have nerves and the shape's almost identical, you can't feel it. You're just fixating on it because you know it's there."

"It _is_ there, and-!"

"Ssssssshhhhhh!"

Both winced at the reminder they weren't the only ones trying to sleep. After all, the day on Makarzia was given over to the good upright sorts that kept the city-planet functioning... theirs to go about without being harassed or harangued by the night creatures. So night creatures slept. Like in this bunk room. Where the night creatures were supposed to shut the fuck up. Neither said they were sorry, since that would have just been exacerbating the problem. They just fell silent. Until-

_Kai?_

The redhead twitched. 'Fuck, that's going to take some getting used to.' Ilia's voice was in her head and yet... not. It wasn't like it just rang through her brain, it kind of went right to her ears, and yet bypassed the physical sensation of hearing and just went right to telling her brain what she'd just heard. _Yeah, Ilia?_ she sent back.

_Can I ask you something?_

_You know you always can. What's up?_

_Why do you still... y'know... go by Kai?_

Kai blinked, briefly confused, before realizing what Ilia meant. _Oh, you mean instead of picking something else, like the others?_

Freed genemods tended to pick a new name, and the general theme was simply "whatever sounded good". Random syllables they thought sounded nice together, names they'd heard here or there, even brand names... she'd known one in the Guild who'd named himself Armani, after a clothing brand from Earth, and he'd certainly dressed his name too. Whatever sounded pleasing to their ears, and it generally had no deeper meaning than that. Niobe, Diore, Cammy, Raoul, Litanon, Laos, Yatra... free genemod names were as varied and diverse as the genemods themselves.

And here she was. Kay-Ay-Eye.

She did her best to keep her thoughts away from the new little device in her neck, not until she got them sorted, not until she was used to separating out what she wanted to send and what she wanted to think to herself. _I don't know, I guess I'm used to being 'Kai'. Most people don't choose their names, it doesn't seem that big a deal to me. Everyone knows me that way, it'd be a pain to get them to learn a new name. You call me 'Kai' too, right?_

 _Oh. Yeah. I guess that makes sense,_ Ilia sent back, though her mental voice sounded a little disappointed, as if she'd expected some deeper meaning.

'... Fuck it. Don't lie to her. Don't lie to yourself.'

 _Because when I think of Zee... or Ico... I think of them saying "Kai",_ she sent back, closing her eyes. _And I don't want to forget that._

_... Kai..._

_Yeah, Ilia?_

_... Sometimes I have a hard time remembering what my mom's voice sounded like saying my name._

Kai squeezed her eyes tightly closed, feeling like something was squeezing her heart too. _... It'll be okay. We're gonna get through this,_ she sent, since it was the only reassurance she could offer. _We're gonna do this for Niobe and everyone else, okay?_

_... Yeah. Okay._

* * *

"I wish I'd had better words to comfort her with. But I was still becoming someone who could figure out what to say... even if I had no way to personally relate to what was being said.

"Because I wound up laying there for a long, long time. Trying to call to mind a face, a voice. Something that had existed before Ico and Niobe saying 'Kai', red eyes and black hair, gold eyes and purple hair.

"Somewhere, I thought, somewhere in there, there had to be something. Those aren't the kinds of things you really, truly forget, right? Somewhere in there, there had to be the memories of some woman holding me, smiling down at me, saying the name I had before 'Kai'. Somewhere. I just had to look hard enough for her, right?

"But as always the only thing I saw was the darkness of the room. The only thing I heard was silence."


	13. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which stealing a car actually becomes a moral issue for Kai.

December 9, 2992, 01:08 (Local Makarzia time)

Kai leaned carefully around the corner of the alley, just feeling the need to eyeball the nearby building. It wasn't anything spectacular, certainly not Horace's usual high-end affairs. A brick and concrete building with heavy roll-up shutterdoors. Probably deliberate, wanting to keep the location of his ulraspeeder on the down-low.

Ilia leaned out below her, and Cammy above. Kai flicked her eyes upward briefly before looking at the garage again. "You realize there are boundless, innumerable ways for this to go tits up on us, right?"

"My what lovely vocabulary words you know. I will have you know that my job as a logistics officer is in fact to log and chart all the possible ways something could go tits up, and then to act like everything is going to go exactly to plan anyway so that I don't have to spend money I'm not authorized to spend and that we don't have anyway covering all of those contingencies."

"I miss being in a ragtag resistance cell that just flung ourselves at plan A and stole everything we needed to carry it out," Ilia muttered.

"Honey I regret to inform you that you're still in one of those, this one's just got a better administrative presence and slightly more hookers on staff."

Kai felt Ilia bristle a little beneath her at Cammy's implication, and attempted to derail the potential bickering by sending, _Alright look, if we're gonna chatter we need to do it like this so we don't draw attention._ That definitely got them both to be quiet, Cammy's ears laying down a bit. Kai could tell she didn't particularly like the psycomms... apparently on the Gulmorra Peninsula, whatever planet that was on, the psycomms that the military had installed and forced the genemods to use had been deeper implants that kept them from having any privacy in their own thoughts whatsoever, very nearly turning them into a hivemind, only the slight 'tinge' of knowing whose thoughts were whose keeping them from that. Kai could very, very easily empathize with the thought of losing even that bit of privacy, the last bit any slave could really be said to have, that of their own private inner thoughts. _When are they making the call?_ she sent, getting them back on track.

 _Ten minutes,_ Cammy sent back, her mental voice practiced, clear, and a tad sour. _Then, if the pattern holds, between three and seven minutes until they hit the salon._

 _At least the psycomms should be compatible with the Morningstar's systems so that I can control it a little better,_ Kai sent. _Once we're in, we haul ass for the dropoff point. ... You've confirmed your buyer will be there, right, Cam?_

_As confirmed as things get in this line of work, yes._

_Alright, I'm driving, Ilia's navigating, Cammy's on overwatch. I'm sure Horace will know his ride's stolen almost immediately, and we're gonna need to be fast, canny, and deadly to deal with a Syndicate rolling crew, or maybe more than one._

_I know, I know!_ Ilia sent in a mildly frustrated tone. Kai made a mental note to adjust her tendency to go over a job plan over and over again a little... she found it comforting but clearly it could be a little much for her current companions. Things were silent for a bit, until datalines flickered across Ilia's blue eyes. _Diore's making the call._

The tension in the alley grew palpable, the three not quite holding their breath but all waiting. And then in the distance there was the sound of an explosion. _That's the right comm relay station,_ Cammy assured them, one of her ears twitching. _My my, turns out our little anarchists are predictable after all._

A few minutes later, Ilia's eyes flickered with datalines and she added, _They're hitting the... salon... thingy,_ while her specks turned a little pink.

In only a matter of seconds men in red and black suits come streaming out of the building the three were watching, piling into their cars or flinging themselves onto speedercycles and roaring off. The three waited until the suited men were barely out of sight to race across the street, Ilia the fastest and actually catching the door before it closed entirely. With that all three were able to duck effortlessly into the garage. 

Kai had expected way more luxury and opulence on the interior, but like the interior it was actually rather plain and empty, more of a warehouse. 'Guess Horace didn't want to draw attention to his ultrarare sweet ride by having its storage space remodeled into something fitting.' 

"There it is!" Ilia called unnecessarily, since the beautiful ivory car was the only thing in the cavernous warehouse, all three of them beating feet towards it. Cammy whipped up the keyfob and hit a button, the doors whirring open... and revealing someone sitting behind the wheel.

"Um. Hello." The lusciously-proportioned woman sitting behind the wheel blinked metallic gold eyes at them, her iridescent metallic blue hair falling in gentle waves just past her shoulders, her body covered (if barely) by a very small, very sparkly silver dress. "Are... you really supposed to be here?"

"Holy shit I can't believe it, he bought the Morningstar FBS _-X_!" Cammy hissed, her eyes having gone wide. "Where the fuck did even he get the money?!"

"Cammy, less dramatic pacing, more explanation?" Kai prompted as she whipped her gun up to point at the woman's face, making her yelp and fling up her hands.

"It's the prototype, they were originally going to include a specially designed bioroid that can drive it, service it, and service the owner too," Cammy said flatly, Ilia's expression saying horror and her pink specks saying embarrassment at the implication. "But they decided it was too much trouble and the ten production cars didn't have one, just the pre-production concept."

"Er, so... what do we do with her?" Ilia asked, glancing between Cammy and Kai, before giving the bioroid a slightly abashed and sympathetic look.

Kai glanced at Ilia, then back at the bioroid. "Get in the back. You're being stolen."

"I, um, I really don't think I should cooperate with being stolen," the blue-haired bioroid murmured, before yelping as Kai pushed the gun forward a little bit. "But then, you have a keyfob, so can it really be stealing?!" With that she turned and went scrambling over the seat to clamber slightly less than elegantly into the back, Ilia's specks going all the way pink and the color starting to seep into the rest of her body as the little dress rode up (probably by design) to show that panties were apparently not included.

Kai gave Ilia a nudge to prompt her into motion, the Faunus girl racing around to the passenger side as Cammy dove over the seat and into the back with far more practiced grace, Kai half-sliding half-throwing herself behind the wheel, yanking the door closed behind her. "Where's convertible mode?" she asked with a glance at the bioroid, receiving a half-frantic point in answer. She thumbed the button and the roof split into numerous sections, retracting down into the body of the car, the side windows automatically rolling down. "Alright, I have a psycomm, link me up to the car's subsystems."

"Yes, ma'am!" the bioroid answered immediately, in some weird blend of chipper and fearful. 

The sensation of being suddenly linked to parts of the car as if it were an extension of her own body was a mingling of strange, comforting, and exhilarating for Kai. She'd always loved speeders, of almost every type and description. Driving, riding, they were times she'd come very close to feeling like she was free. 

_Kavinsky - Testarossa Autodrive_

But she had to keep her mind on task now. She thought the car into ignition, and accessed its control over the garage door. She stomped on the gas, the tires barely spinning at all before perfectly catching traction and sending the sleek car shooting forward like an arrow from a bowstring, just barely clearing the rising garage door and already drifting through the turn onto the street, back end dovetailing just briefly before the acceleration sent them rocketing down the street.

 _Be careful, goddammit!_ Cammy snapped over the psycomms, the sound of the wind rushing past making verbal communication problematic. She was in the midst of assembling a modular heavy sniper rifle, fingers sure and certain despite the feed. Then her mental voice returned to collected and almost prim as she added, _We get much more money if we deliver it in pristine condition._

 _And the buyer didn't tell you about the little "extra" currently sitting in the backseat showing off her finely-crafted pussy?_ Kai sent, resisting the urge to quirk an eyebrow as she saw in the rearview mirror that the bioroid blushed and tried to pull her dress down without actually lifting her ass up. 'Must be tied into the psycomms through the car linkup.'

 _No,_ Cammy sent back sourly, even as she slipped her feet out of her heels and rose to stand, completely unbothered by the near ninety degree turn Kai executed even as she leaned her back against the back of the driver's seat and raised a stockinged foot to brace it against the back seat. 

_Left. Two blocks. Right,_ Ilia sent, before more datalines flickered across her eyes. _We've got pursuers approaching, confirmed._

_How far behind and how much of a lead are we keeping?_

_He says they're gaining, and that it's bad._

"What?!" Kai snapped aloud without thinking, eyes darting to the console to confirm the speed readout she could already sense in her mind. "Where the fuck did he get enough supercars to outfit a rolling crew with-?!"

 _Oh Kaiiii~,_ Cammy sent, right ahead of the sound of sirens getting steadily louder rather than more distant. _We have a big problem~!_

"Oh shit oh shit oh FUCK Horace you absolute _bitch_!" Kai snarled, slamming a palm against the steering wheel. "He called the fucking cops on us!"

 _They're coming into firing range now,_ Cammy sent with slightly too much calm. _Mine, not theirs, unless they've upgraded their speedwagons' external weaponry again._

 _Do NOT kill a cop!_ Kai snapped back, similarly snapping the car into a hard turn at Ilia's direction and speeding down a narrower street, having to dodge a few cars but trying to choke the pursuing squad down to fewer lanes.

 _You don't have to tell me,_ Cammy replied with an even-yet-annoyed edge.

 _Am I missing something? We're a gang, we kill people kind of all the time,_ Ilia sent, lifting up a little to glance back at the approaching white-and-blues, larger and with more curves and angles than the usual cruisers, outfitted with multiple weapon emplacements. _We killed Atlas and SDC guards sometimes back in the White Fang,_ she added with a mental snort that said she didn't really see a difference between the two things. _Sienna didn't really like it but it wasn't that big of a deal._

 _How did Niobe completely miss teaching you rule one?_ Kai sent back more in shock than annoyance, but plenty of both as she drifted around another corner... and swore aloud as the lead cop in his Speedwagon of Doom somehow made the same drift turn a few seconds later. _Rule one of Makarzia, you never,_ **_ever_ ** _kill a cop._

 _It's not morality, darling, it's pragmatism,_ Cammy sent calmly as she adjusted the rifle's settings without taking her eyes off the pursuing lawenoff vehicles. _The police leave us alone for just about everything that we don't get too blatant about being caught red-handed with, and in turn we don't bother them. Ninety percent of them might be six-hour-shifters loitering in outdated speeders, but the other ten percent are funded and outfitted like a planetary army to deal with the crimes they don't ignore._

 _And that ten percent will ram itself ten miles up your ass if you kill a cop,_ Kai added in, gritting her teeth. _Which means calling the cops on another gangbanger is a_ **_huge_ ** _violation of the unwritten rules, Horace has crossed a fucking line._

 _I'd imagine between us showing him up at the meeting and then stealing his personal speeder we've rather crossed a few of his own lines,_ Cammy noted calmly before pulling the trigger.

Kai winced a little, but the sound that came was a solid impact on armor... clearly more a statement that they weren't intending to pull over and surrender than any real attempt at violence. Then her head snapped to the side as there was another report and then the sound of tires squealing and vehicles slamming together.

_I hit the engine block, they're fine._

_Ilia, we need a sharp turn they can't make in those heavier wagons, or a street just wide enough for the Morningstar, preferably both,_ Kai sent, flicking her eyes to the side.

 _I'm searching._ Datalines flitted across Ilia's eyes as she consulted both the network of Geneslicers and their computers, before sending, _Ten miles ahead and two blocks over, if we drift it just right we can get through a long alley and through a place called Sommerset Square, from there we can get into an old sewer pipe and come out about five megablocks in a whole different direction._

'Sommerset Square, I know that name,' Kai thought as she reached down to manually tap the engine adjustment panel, preparing to execute a harder turn than the ones before. Then it hit her.

There was a spontaneous market in Sommerset Square. It wasn't scheduled, it just happened, jam-packed with people. In a very Human part of town. Ilia had to know about the market too, either from the Geneslicer network or just having been on Makarzia in this sector for almost a year.

The question was, did she care?

The turn was on her. The people in Sommerset Square would be normals... night creatures, maybe, but probably not gangbangers, just a lot of lifestylers, sellers, wanderfolk, nobody that had signed on to have a massive car come smashing through them so fast and with such traction that it wouldn't even slow down from crushing their bodies to pieces. It was unthinkable to just sacrifice them, so the question was, did she trust Ilia to feel like she did?

She yanked hard on the wheel, worked the brake and pedal, leaned into the turn physically a bit, and then shot forward into the alley.

 _The market!_ Cammy yelped across the psycomms, apparently having just figured out the same thing you did...

... as the Morningstar shot out of the alley and across the completely empty square.

 _It's fine, the network told me it was empty,_ Ilia responded, a slightly heavy edge to the mental words. _Look, right up there, the sewer pipe._

 _Cam, let's close up for this,_ Kai sent, waiting for Cammy to turn and drop onto the bench-style backseat with the bioroid before the roof closed up over them again, side windows sliding back up and fitting tight. Kai slowed the car to a bare roll, bumping it over the lip of the curb at the edge and across the top of the massive pipe, then pumped some gas (or whatever it used... she accessed the user manual with her psycomm, sending a copy to her own comm as well just to check it out of curiosity later) to send it shooting forward a bit, landing with a lurch and a heavy splash of grey-green-brown water, a light spray of it sent up on the sides as they started rolling through the pipe, the headlights illuminating little but metal and rust.

"Oh... oh nooooo," the bioroid whimpered, pressing her hands over her face.

"It'll wash off," Kai assured her absentmindedly, readjusting the engine performance to the slow, steady cruise and the heavy wetness of the pipe's bottom.

"You're not the one who has to clean it," the blue-haired entity murmured a little sulkily, slumping her head.

Kai turned her head, just eyeing the bioroid out of the corner of her eye for a moment. 'Holy shit, they seriously just made a whole entire actual person to go with a car. Zero point zero zero zero one percenters are wild.' But she kept that thought to herself, for awhile just responding to Ilia's guidance of which path through the pipes to take.

_You were worried I'd send you through a crowded market because they were just humans, huh?_

Kai was learning to distinguish the slight difference in 'sound' between teamspeak and individual sends. Ilia's words had been sent right to her, leaving Cammy looped out. The redhead's red eyes flicked aside to Ilia again, the Faunus woman's own blue eyes fixed ahead as if not having said anything. This wasn't a question that deserved a quick, scoffing answer.

This wasn't a person that deserved a quick, scoffing answer.

So Kai thought about how best to phrase her feelings for a moment, before sending back, _I didn't know you wouldn't do that. But I believed that you wouldn't do that._

Ilia was quiet other than her verbal directions for a few moments. Then finally she sent, _There was a time I probably would have done it, yeah. Maybe even been glad of the opportunity. It's... easy to hate someone when you think they're all looking down at you from privilege and laughing. Easier to hate someone when you never have to think about how they feel._ "Turn right," she added aloud. 

_Now?_ Kai prompted gently, the Morningstar's headlights sweeping gently across the pipe walls as she made the turn.

 _... After talking with you... hearing what you went through... ... like I said, I did a lot of thinking. I... started wondering what those girls... ...my friends... what they actually would have said after finding out I was a Faunus. If I'd said my parents died. If I said how much I was hurting. I always assumed they would have just laughed more... that they would have mocked me, hated me, kicked me out. I... started wondering if instead maybe they'd have started seeing Faunus differently after hearing that, as people instead of some distant_ **_thing_ ** _they didn't understand, the way I could start seeing humans after hearing what happened to you. But I never gave them the chance to say anything, I just attacked them. Now I'll never know whether they were really the evil bitches I thought they were... or if they were just people who didn't understand different people. ... Like me._

Kai wasn't sure what to say to that. It wasn't something she could just assure Ilia that it would be okay with time, that if they pushed through and focused on the job that it was a pain that would pass, a fleeting thought that would stop bothering her. They were solid, physical actions that couldn't be taken back. Couldn't be made better with a pat on the shoulder and a rub on the head and an 'It's okay, kiddo.'

It was the pain of never knowing if what you'd done was the right thing, and heavily suspecting it was the wrong one.

Kai slid a hand over, rested it over one of Ilia's, gave it a squeeze, got a little smile in return all the same. It gladdened the redhead's heart, just a little. Even if Ilia wasn't happy with the results of the snap decision she'd made years ago... Kai found herself pretty damn satisfied with the one she'd made minutes ago.

Luckily, the pipe opened up again in a nicer part of the sector... specifically, sliding through the opening of an artificial water feature and through what looked like some sort of reflecting pond, a fair amount of the grimy 'water' sluicing off the glittering white exterior. Kai returned it to convertible mode once they were on the road again, noting that there was definitely a distinct lingering whiff, but they were out and they were close to the airfield.

This airfield in particular was meant for the higher-end interplanetary shipping lanes, and the part they were headed to was fairly exclusive. The gate even slid open for them as they approached it, Kai navigating across the airfield towards a storagejumper so clean and overdesigned that it had to be their client's.

He was waiting by the ramp of the storagejumper ship, and he just pinged Kai as 'rich smug douchebag'. Tall and lean and old and wearing a suit the exact same color as the Morningstar. 'Yup, that's the sort of douchebag that has his tailor make his suits to match his insanely expensive car,' Kai thought as she pulled up to a stop in general line with the ramp, the four of them getting out, though the bioroid only with urging from Cammy.

The client's nose wrinkled. "I thought I requested that it be delivered in immaculate condition?"

"Not a scratch, not a ding," Cammy assured him cheerfully. "Run it through an autocleaner a few times and it will be exactly like new. Surely you're not going to quibble over a bit of _water_ on the exterior, sir?"

"Mm. Well, I suppose not." He inclined his head, a handful of men wearing white armor and face-concealing helmets marching down the ramp. "Load the car and secure it for transport." His dark eyes tracked to the blue-haired bioroid, who started trembling noticeably as he said, "Prepare the transport coffin for the service unit."

Without hesitation, Kai pulled a pair of pistols and brought them up to aim at his face. "Yeah, not happening."

Immediately there were the sounds of blaster rifles being primed, all of them aimed at Kai, but her eyes stayed on the client's as he looked back at her, doing his best to seem completely unruffled, though she could see the faintest pinching around his eyes. "I _do_ wonder what you're doing, young lady."

Then his eyes widened perceptibly as the barrel of a high caliber rifle pressed up against the side of his head and nudged it gently to a tilt. From the body language of the client's mooks, Cammy's swift, near-silent switch of position had caught them off guard too.

"You paid us for _a_ Morningstar FBS, sir," the genemod chirped cheerfully, pinkish eyes glittering. "Not _the_ Morningstar FBS-X. So if you don't mind, we'll be turning the Morningstar FBS over to you, and keeping the -X, thank you very much."

"Preposterous. I hired you to steal a specific car from a specific individual. In any event, when I hired you, I did not know-"

Cammy dramatically hissed in a breath through her teeth, still smiling, though her eyes glittered with the sort of light that only someone who was literally born to kill could. "Ooooo now see you're about to make a very bad mistake. I don't like it when my dates lie to me, I don't like it even more when my clients lie to me, and I absolutely _despise_ it when my clients assume I'm stupid."

"What'd you do, bring the 'transport coffin' in case it just so happened to be the one-of-a-kind in the multiverse prototype?" Kai scoffed. "Tip for the future, buddy, the little people's ears don't just shut off when you stop talking to them."

"... An excellent tip indeed." His eyes narrowed. "But I seem to have quite a bit more men than you, with quite a bit better weapons. I would suggest that this means you've little bargaining position on the matter."

Kai was about to quip that he'd be the first one to die either way, when there was a call of "HEY!" from behind them. Risking a glance, she almost burst out laughing at the sight of Ilia scowling deeply at the client and his goons, her weapon out and the tip of the fencing foil pressing against the leather seat of the passenger side just barely enough to indent it. "Cut the _crap_ or the headrest _gets it_!"

"Oh no," the bioroid gasped, covering her mouth with both hands, while Cammy actually had to lower her head a little, shoulders shaking.

The man's lips pursed. Then, slowly, he nodded. "Very well. The agreed-upon price. Keep the bioroid."

"Thumbprint please," Cammy chirped, holding out a contract databoard. Once he'd placed his thumb on the reader with all the bad grace he could muster, she slowly backed off to stand with Kai, keeping the rifle aimed with one hand and tucking the other around the bioroid's middle. "Thank you, have a nice day."

"Indeed." Snapping his fingers, the client turned and made his way into the storagejumper, leaving his men to start pushing the Morningstar up the ramp.

"No, wait, no," the bioroid whispered softly, straining gently against Cammy's grip and reaching towards the car with both hands. "That's me, that's the reason I exist, I-"

"Sshh sshh sshh," Cammy urged gently as the ramp began to raise, passing her rifle to Kai and instead drawing the artificially-created woman closer with both hands. "It's alright, it's alright. That's not you, baby, it's just a car. You didn't want to go with him, did you?"

"N-no... but... but I..." Gold eyes stared at the jumper longingly as it started to rise in the sky. "But I... it's my purpose, I... what am I without it?" she whispered, starting to tremble.

"You're you," Cammy assured her, smiling and drawing her into an embrace, gently petting the other woman's iridescent blue hair. "And you can come home with us. Hey. How does 'Lucy' sound as a name, hm? Would you like that?"

"I..." There was a moment's hesitation, before Lucy slumped against Cammy and whispered, "I like it."

* * *

"I'm not even gonna equivocate: There was a time I'd have just bargained for a higher price.

"It wouldn't have even occurred to me to think about Lucy. About the fact that she was a person, an actual person no matter how she was made, who was sitting there in a car and having her existence decided by everyone else. I wouldn't have cared not because she was a bioroid, but because she was an outsider. Someone who hadn't already been fit into my world as someone I needed to care about.

"No, that was all Ilia. That was Ilia's smile, that was the way her eyes lit up when I offered to teach her things, that was Ilia's pain over choices she couldn't take back. That was deciding that I was going to start making decisions where I didn't have to look back years later and hate myself for not standing up and doing what I could.

"It was the first time I really, truly stood up for someone who needed me. I wasn't quite awake yet, but I was starting to become that person Mikon told me she thought was inside me. Little by little. And I'd wake up soon.

"I heard from someone, later on, that she just left one day. Lucy, that is. She just smiled, said she loved everyone but she wanted to go, and she was gone. Drove off into the Makarzian night just to drive. For herself. Because she wanted to. I like to think that after she'd gotten all she had to get out of the Makarzian streets, she grabbed herself a ship somewhere and set off into the stars. To flit through the Black like a bird on the wing, flying to fly, living to live.

"It makes me smile to think of. Wherever you are, Lucy, happy driving."


	14. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Kai says three of the four words she wanted to say the most.

December 9, 2992, 03:32 (Local Makarzia time)

"Great. Another mouth to feed."

"She doesn't eat." When Niobe shot her a look, Kai shrugged and raised her comm, pointing at the screen. "Downloaded the Morningstar's operation manual while I was driving. She absorbs ambient energy from the power grid. Makarzia's won't be as efficient as the car's but she'll be fine."

"Smartass." Niobe rolled her eyes. "Okay, fine, another body taking up space that can't use a gun. No, no, it's fine," she said, holding up a hand as Cammy started to protest. "You guys made the right call, I'm with you on it. I'm just entitled to grouse a little, one of the perks of being in charge."

"My, that sounds lovely," Cammy chirped, kitty-grinning smugly.

"If you want a spanking, you sassy bitch, just ask for one," Niobe snorted, smacking Cammy's ass lightly before thumbing at the door. "Now fuck off, wouldja? Not you," she added, flicking a finger towards Kai as the redhead started to get up as well. "Needa talk to you."

"Sure, Boss, s'up?" Kai asked, sitting back down and tucking her hands behind her head as Cammy closed the door to the small meeting room behind her.

"Couldn't have pulled this one off without you, kid, and it wound up being a great score," Niobe said as she settled into her own chair.

"Could've gone better. We won't be seeing that guy asking us for anything again. And Horace'll hold a grudge. ... But yeah, we actually pulled it off. Couldn't have done it without Cammy, and especially Ilia."

"The money it's brought in is gonna make a huge difference. Fuck Horace, he's got his plate full dealing with the Demons himself, he wants to turn into a pussy-ass cop-calling bitch let him get known for it, he'll never be invited to another intergang meeting again. He can fuck off in the cold and die. But speaking of you and Ilia, what I've got for you next has something to do with that."

"S'up?" Kai frowned a little, worry creasing her forehead just slightly. "Something wrong?"

"Hell no. You two have been doing great together, which is why I want the two of you working on a long extended job for me." Niobe rolled her shoulders, as if she could shrug off the slightly nervous air around her that pervaded through the casual ease with which she spoke. "We've got capital and communications covered, but there's a third thing Cammy didn't mention... people. We need a steady influx of people to replace what we've lost, and to start expanding. Not just fighters, but the everyday people... merchants, data workers, technicians, all that jazz. If we're gonna try and push the demons out of Tailtown, that means taking responsibility for Tailtown, not just living in it."

"Sounds a little Neokuza but I follow you," Kai answered with a grin. "So what're you thinking of for this recruitment drive?"

"Here." Niobe slid a slip of thin plastipaper across the table, a Guild rosette glowing in one corner.

Kai blinked, picking it up. "This is a guest pass." Going to the Guildhall, the massive city-sized enclosed complex that GIPSE was based out of, generally required one to have already submitted an application for membership and paid a requisite fee... unless you hitched a ride with an already-licensed merc who had their beacon on them. But mercs couldn't just bring anyone they wanted along, they had to buy guest passes... and guest passes were expensive. 

They sold for massive amounts in the outside world as well, or getting a Guild merc to take you to the Guildhall using one cost almost as much. But once you were there, the guest could take in all the amenities and facilities, or apply for Guild membership themselves. Guest passes were, therefore, highly valuable commodities, some mercs even made an entire living off of selling them to other mercs who needed one, or ferrying nonmembers to the Guildhall.

"You know Ilia's not from here, right?"

"She's a Faunus, so she's from the same place Grey is, right?" Kai said with a shrug.

"Remnant, yeah. Apparently as y'do, they treat the Faunus like shit there. So I'm thinking, there's a resource waiting to be tapped." Niobe shrugged again and flitted a hand upward. "I've rigged up a bunch of site-to-site dimensional beacons, and we've got plans for 'em as well as the calibration necessary, a canny little tech-head like you should be able to make more as needed. You head over there, tell any Faunus you think might be interested how it is here... y'know, don't blow smoke up their ass, but stress the opportunities. The beacon'll take them to a street that hardly ever sees any use, about a block from this club the Down Boy... I'll have someone positioned outside the whole time to send 'em to Cammy to figure out where they'll go."

"Interdimensional, interplanetary recruiting, okaaaay," Kai said slowly. "And taking Ilia makes sense, since it's home turf for her. Well... I mean, it might not be, y'know?" she pointed out with a small frown.

"Yeah, Grey and Ilia might not be from the same Remnant, but I know Grey's got coords for the place. Here, give 'im this letter," Niobe said, proffering an oldschool sealed envelope. "This is me offering him a job direct, to get you there."

"Grey, huh?" Kai glanced at the envelope just a little ruefully. "He wants to fuck my brains out, y'know."

"Yeah well he might do it, Grey plays rough, maybe a little too rough for some girls." Niobe quirked a brow. "But he'll play it straight with you if you play it straight with him, especially once he sees this is a job from me."

"Okay, so, we head over to Remnant, talk to some Faunus, get you some fresh blood," Kai ran down with a nod, tucking the envelope and guest pass into one of her dimensional pockets. "When you want us back?"

"I dunno. I want as many as you can get me, so. Few weeks. Months." Niobe shrugged nonchalantly again, face just a bit too calm. "Basically I figure stick around there recruiting until I come to get you."

Slowly, what was happening began to dawn on Kai.

"... This isn't a fucking recruitment mission, Niobe, you're sending us away."

She could see from the suppressed wince that she'd hit it exactly on the head.

Kai came to her feet, red eyes flashing. "What the  _ fuck _ , Niobe, where do you get off-?!"

"NO WHERE THE FUCK DO  _ YOU _ GET OFF?!" Niobe snapped back, her voice rising to a near-roar as she rose to her feet, chair clattering to the ground behind her in two pieces. Her face contorted with rage, which half frightened and half infuriated Kai... 

Until you saw tears starting to streak down Niobe's cheeks. 

"Where the  _ fuck _ do you get off getting pissed at me for caring about her? About you?" 

"Niobe," Kai whispered, something twisting in her heart. She had never, ever, not once, seen the genemod cry. Had never even thought about the possibility that she might.

"She's so fuckin'  _ young _ ," Niobe whispered, volume having fled as fast as the anger, running her hands up her face as she lowered her head, smearing her tears into her bangs. "As young as you were when the old man walked into the apartment with you, actually holding your hand like you were... like... and she looks at me the  _ same way _ ," she continued, her voice starting to crack, the toughest woman Kai had ever known actually letting out a soft sob. "I'm  _ nothing _ , I was  _ trash _ , he literally pulled me out of the trash and fuck him for how he did it but I was nothing and you looked at me like I was  _ everything _ and so does she and how the fuck does that even happen?"

Niobe clutched the sides of her head, trembling a little, swallowing hard before she could even continue. "... Kid... I've been shot by every damn weapon there is, seems like... had parts of me blown off, been sewn back together with nothing but a bit of rebar to bite for the pain, I've been tortured, stabbed, racked, hung... and I shrugged every fucking bit of it off because I lived through it and it was just pain. ... But don't ask me to look down at the two of you laying dead in the street and live with it." 

She raised her head, tears running anew down her cheeks as her voice turned into a harsh whisper, "I can't survive that."

"... We've always been in this life, Niobe, her and me both," Kai said quietly. "We'll go with you to the end. Because you  _ are _ everything to us. It's just that simple," she added with a small shake of her head.

"This isn't organized crime and gangbanger shit, kid. The moment I escalate this with that cash we brought in, so do the Demons. Hell, so does every other gang, probably. It's war, now. You've seen some shit, but you've never seen war. And I'm not eager to drag you into one." Niobe turned to right her chair, saw it was broken, sighed, and pulled over another one, sinking into it with a sudden lack of her usual bounciness and energy. "I dunno what the fuck you'll be walking into on Remnant... for all I fuckin' know it's just another war... but I know for damn sure there's gonna be one here, and I don't want you to be part of it. Another planet, another dimension, at least there's a chance you'll be better off. I'm sending her there either way... for the love of the Crystal Dragon don't make me send her alone," Niobe murmured, leaning her forehead on her laced fingers.

"... Okay. Okay, Niobe, I'll go to Remnant with her," Kai said softly after a long silence. "Just... come get us when things settle down here, okay?"

"You bet your ass," Niobe grunted, summoning something like a smile, fragile and dying thing though it was.

"... What about Zee, Niobe?" 

"She's on a transport right now. Headed to the other side of Makarzia. Cammy vetted a family that's gonna hire her as a live-in maid... they're good people, she'll get a salary, clothing allowance, free to leave whenever she wants. Sorry you didn't get to say goodbye... I finalized everything while you were out, and I didn't want Underfoot here any more than I want Ilia or you."

Kai absorbed that for a moment, then took a deep breath and nodded as she let it out. "... I'll see her when I get back. ... You talked to the old man, then, I guess?"

"Yeah. We came to an understanding." Surprisingly, Niobe's tone didn't suggest that was a euphemism for violence. She had a far-off look in her eye, staring at something a thousand miles away before she shook her head. "... Anyway. Take a day. Rest up. Take whatever you wanna take as far as weapons and equipment goes. Tomorrow by this time I want you and Ilia beaconing to the Guildhall. Find Grey's horny feline ass and give him the letter. I'm hoping he'll stick around for awhile and help you get settled as a favor to me, but I'm not counting on it. I'm serious about you convincing any Faunus that want something more than Remnant is offering them, but don't bullshit them either. Hell, you've lived here, both of you, you know the score, tell it to 'em straight and let 'em make their choice. And for godsakes stay there and stay safe until I or someone else you know comes to get you."

Kai nodded slowly. She just wasn't sure what to do. She could feel that give-no-fucks armor she'd built up over the years crumbling around her. She understood that there was something that, if she didn't say it now, she knew she might never be able to, might never get to. And she couldn't live with herself if she didn't. 

"... Niobe," she whispered. "... I love you."

"... I love you too, kid," Niobe replied with a shaky voice, unable to look at Kai lest the armor hers had been based on shatter forever as well. "Now get the fuck out of here and get some sleep."

* * *

"There are very few things in my life I'm proud of from before I woke up.

"I'm proud of making Ilia smile. I'm proud that I could help her get past her hate to a place she felt better about herself and who she was. I'm proud that I kept Zee safe until she could be given a free life and a good place in the world.

"And I'm proud of those three words I got myself to speak in a thousand year old blast bunker the day before I left Makarzia.

"The only thing I'm not proud of is that they weren't four.

"I love you, Mom."


	15. Interlude 4

Guild of Interdimensional Professionals, Specialists, and Enforcers Database

File 92811-LL-12-7: Remnant

Hub planet known to dimensional fractures. Date of registration of Remnant 1: 07-08-XXX13

Dimensional travel to Prime: Disabled

Classification: Death World

Environment: E-type

Known variants: 23,793 as of last dimensional scan

As a Death World, Remnant is not suggested for casual dimensional travel. It is highly suggested that mercenaries not travel to Remnant unless taking a mission registered from there. Your Guild insurance plans therefore may not cover injuries or death sustained while on Remnant if you are not responding to a listing. Please make all necessary preparations for survival situations and extremely hostile local life.

Remnant is classified as a Death World primarily due to Hostile Seminatural Pseudolifeforms known as Grimm. 99% of Remnants as checked by the dimensional database have a high population of these HSPs.

Grimm are classified as empathic hazards as they are drawn to negative emotions, primarily fear. This has led the population of most Remnants to cluster together heavily in a handful of densely populated megacities, leaving much of the world technically habitable but unoccupied save for small settlements. Average population of Remnants: 300,000,000.

Other local hazards include bandits, extremely hostile megafauna, deposits of a volatile crystallized substance ("Dust"), and the local warrior caste known as Huntresses/Huntsmen or, on some variants, Hunters.

Hunters should be assumed to have a personal biological forcefield ("Aura"). This may also express itself in what is commonly referred to as "superpowers" by the majority of Guild certified mercenaries. Be cautious when confronting any Hunter, they are all to be considered armed, dangerous, and suitable for recruitment as a Guild mercenary with minimal testing.


	16. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Kai says her goodbyes.

December 10, 2992, 01:01 (Local Makarzia time)

She'd gotten the fuck out and gotten some sleep.

What the hell else was she supposed to do? Kai was still trying to come to grips with the fact that she was being sent away. That Niobe didn't want her there.

'Shut up, idiot, it's not that she doesn't want you here, she just wants you somewhere safe,' she thought as she sat at her favorite Tailtown ramen shop after finding herself unable to sleep any more. Not because it was particularly good but because it was particularly cheap and it had yet to poison her. The caff was also middling, for Makarzia.

Makarzia wasn't really home, per se. It was hard to say if she'd ever really thought of somewhere as "home", other than meaning a convenient word to refer to wherever she was staying at the time. In fact there was a saying: 'Makarzia isn't anyone's home, it's just where they are until they find somewhere better to be.'

Still, it made it a little hard to decide what to do with her last few hours there. Maybe forever.

She didn't need to go shopping... anything they had on Makarzia could be had better and almost as cheap on the Guildhall. She didn't really need to say goodbyes... she had people she'd call friends in the Geneslicers, but the gangbanger life wasn't really big on goodbyes. People came and went one way or another all the time... if you weren't particularly close, an unspoken "until next time" existed among everyone.

... Still. Kai supposed there were a few of those to tend to. She drank down the last of the broth from her bowl, tossed bills on the table, and headed back to the bunker.

Luckily, one of the people she actually wanted to say goodbye to was in the armory when she went in to loot it.

"Hey, Diore," she said with a grin as she saw the slender man eyeing a rack of pistols while holding a tablet. "Might wanna wait a minute."

"Oh, hey Kai. Actually I've got a few things picked out for you, if you wanna take a look," he replied, setting the tablet and heading over. "Niobe told me you're heading to a planet with some pretty hostile lifeforms, figured I should pick you out some stuff that played to your strengths."

"My dude they've got HSPs crawling all over the planet according to the entry I looked up on my Guild comm," Kai snorted as she fell into a pace behind him.

Diore stopped and half-turned. "Aren't _demons_ classified as HSPs? Like, not these assholes we've been fighting down here, but actual, literal demons?"

"Yeah, fun huh?"

"And Niobe thinks you'll be safer there, huh? She must think it's gonna get bad." Diore shook his head, actually seeming more amused than anything as he gestured to a table. "Alright so since your preference is for pistols I've laid that out for you. Got you a nice little pair of quickfire pistols," he continued, picking up the sleek red guns, turning them back and forth. "Full auto, low weight, and..." He flicked a switch on the side of them. "Armor piercing or hollow point switchable, even with ammo."

"Goddamn, switchable infinite ammo without changing mags?" Kai accepted the pair of pistols and eyed them. "These must be damn near the most expensive guns in here."

"No, this is." Diore hefted up a much heavier, larger pistol, its barrel ringed by currently unlit blue rings etched into the metal. "Magnetic acceleration pistol. Fires hard metal core ceramicoats. You could shoot through the doors of this damn bunker if you need to. You'll probably never find ammo for it anywhere off of some of the high end shops here or the Guildhall, but I've laid out all the mags we have for it. Not quite a railgun, but as close as you're gonna get in a pistol that doesn't eat battery packs like a hypochondriac munching sugar pills."

"... Diore, c'mon, man, I can't take this shit," Kai said with a shake of the head. "Niobe thinks there's gonna be a war here, I can't just-" she protested as she turned to set one of the quickfires down.

His hand snagged her wrist. Held it, gently. "Kai," he said softly, looking her in the eyes. "Take the fucking guns, okay?"

After a moment, she nodded. Then she stepped forward, leaning down to wrap her arms around his back and pat it. "Take care of her for me, okay, man?"

"I will." Diore smiled and patted her back in return. "I'll make sure she's here waiting when you get back." He stepped back, gestured to the table. "Anyway. Shoulder holster sling for the quickfires, back holster for the mag accel. Of course probably take your more standard repliammo high caliber, you won't always be needing to kill buildings."

"Right." She grinned, briefly clasping his hand and hauling him into a shoulder-bump. "Gonna miss you, my chu."

"You too, my chu."

* * *

"He used it as a sort of all-purpose replacement word, if you're curious. Sort of as a joke. Genemods weren't like Faunus... they considered their animal traits kind of like accessories. A part of them, sure, but they didn't mind joking or laughing about them, or even making fun of themselves a bit.

"There wasn't really anything you could call 'genemod culture'. Almost no genemods were born the natural way... they had a tough time making communities that lasted long enough to start producing the next generation reliably, especially since some of them were specifically altered to prevent that. When everyone was first-generation genemod, you couldn't really claim that you had much in the way of an actual culture, more just preferences, tendencies.

"So each one sort of had to invent a little personal mini-culture. Most of them had personal running gags that they developed, and if you got to know them well enough you got to be in on it.

"Diore's was 'chu'. Apparently it's a Nipponzi term for what mice say, and he just decided he liked it. So he'd use 'chu' for stuff when he felt like it, or when nothing else quite seemed to fit. 'Fuck you' wasn't strong enough? 'Chu chu', there y'go.

"Using it to refer to him was, I think, a way to show him that while our relationship didn't have a really good word for it, it was still special to me. He worried over me, he helped me, he even patched me up personally more than a few times when I came in after kinda-sorta winning a fight with Street Demons, in that I didn't die. Kind of a... slightly fussy aunt, I guess?

"But that wasn't exactly flattering. 'My chu' fit better for both of us. The guy who'd taken care of me, who was gonna take care of my mom for me. My chu."

* * *

Kai flapped her coat a little as she adjusted to the feel and weight of her new holsters, having shifted the standard high cal to a thigh one. She was a little more weighted than usual but not enough that it would hamper her from getting as deadly as she liked with a sword.

She was young and tough and figured there wasn't much that could, really.

Cammy was in the planning room, looking over three tablets and two holoprojections, all efficient, all business, and with a massive thermos of what smelled like hot chocolate in front of her. Wow, the dollar a packet stuff, she was splurging after the Morningstar job, seemed like.

"What is it?" she asked, glancing up from her current tablet as Kai walked in.

"Just thought I'd drop by, say goodbye. I'm gonna be leaving in a few hours. Figured you might be busy then, so."

"I'm busy now," Cammy replied primly, turning her eyes back to her work.

"... Right." Kai shrugged a little. "Look, before I leave, can I just go ahead and ask... are we cool?"

Cammy blinked, honestly seeming surprised by the question, lifting her head, ears twitching. She regarded Kai for long moments.

Then she smiled.

She rose, walked over. Tugged on one of the kitty ears of the coat's hood to nudge it back, a hand brushing tenderly over the human's forehead to clear away the hair, placed a soft kiss in the center.

"You're a huge pain in the ass and you're bothering me," she murmured warmly, giving Kai a push on the head. "Fuck off."

* * *

"So yeah, we were cool.

"See, once you admit you're fine with just straight-up creating whole, specialized people to fight and die in your wars for you, I guess a whole lot of other restrictions on what's okay to do go out the window.

"They made Cammy smart, tactical, canny, and dedicated so that she could do paperwork, figure out logistics, do scrounging, all the scut work of a military office. Gave her amazing hand-eye coordination so she could be a sniper when they needed defending. And they made her gorgeous so that she could bend over the desk or warm an officer's bed when they felt like it.

"Hey, you were already making people to run into a hail of bullets for you, why not make the vat-born secretary a good lay while you were at it?

"When she was in, Cammy had to play the good girl. Easy enough to order her to always be personable, always chipper, never critical, always complimentary. And she was chipped so she had to.

"Now that she was free, telling people when they were annoying her was like her rebellion for all those years being forced to be nice. Sure, she wound up being insincere the other direction, but at least she was choosing it. That was _her_ 'fuck you' to her experience as a slave.

"I think Cammy was one of the closest things I had to just a straight-up friend. There wasn't anything else mingled into it... no feeling of trying to slot her into a family role, something grander or greater. She was just a buddy.

"Those are important too."

* * *

It was getting late by the time Kai strolled out of the locker room after one last public shower for awhile. She assumed. That was when she found Ilia sitting in the corner crying.

'At least she's facing outward,' Kai thought a little miserably, looking down at her friend for long moments, the unhappy little ball of lzrd that she was at the moment, her whole body having a faint blue tinge. So it could have been worse. And fuck if she didn't feel like doing the same thing herself, she just had a lot more practice at resisting the urge.

Kai let her back rest against the wall and sank down to sit beside Ilia, just sitting there for a moment as the younger woman cried. Just keeping her company. Waiting for her to be ready.

When Ilia's sobs finally tapered off, Kai reached over to rub her back a little. "Not excited to be going home?"

"... I'd started thinking of this place as home," Ilia admitted after a moment.

'Me too.' She almost said it, realized it was almost true. But not quite. So she said nothing, just continuing to rub gently.

"... Kai." Ilia sniffled a little. "Niobe told me that... that it might not be the same Remnant that I come from." She turned, looking at the redhead, almost pleading for guidance. "There are people I want to see again... people I want to talk to. There's someone... there's someone else I need to apologize to, to tell them I understand now why they... did what they did. But what if they don't even know me? What if I never existed there, or I was... even more awful? What do I do?"

Without hesitation, Kai hauled her in for a hug.

"You lean on me," Kai whispered to her, a hand pressed to the back of her friend's head. "What you do is you lean on me, and I lean on you, and together we stay up. Okay?"

Ilia clung to her and said nothing. That meant 'Okay'.

Their goodbyes to Niobe were almost dry-eyed by comparison.

This was the part that was already done, in many ways. The tears, the pain, the loss had already come for both of them when Niobe told them the plan. So there were smiles now, wan and sad as they were, as Niobe rubbed Ilia's shoulders fondly.

Both Ilia and Kai were surprised when Niobe stepped in and just straight-up hugged the small woman, squeezing her tightly, then stepped over and did the same for Kai. She leaned back in to whisper something to Ilia, soft and near-silent, but it set a few tears to flowing. Then she stepped back, grinning, no-fucks-given Niobe once again.

"Okay. I'll see you guys when I see you. Take care of yourselves. Don't blow up the moon or some shit."

Having hastily wiped her face, Ilia snorted. "Too late."

Niobe quirked a brow, before just letting the grin touch her eyes a little, focusing on Kai. "It'll be okay, kid. I'll come and get you soonest."

"Yeah." Kai grinned back, forcing herself not to let a single tear escape. Instead she just drew Ilia in close, murmuring to her, "Okay, we're gonna come out moving forward, so get ready to start walking, alright?" At Ilia's nod, Kai slipped a hand into her pocket, called the beacon into her hand, slid it out. Then she looked up, fixing her gaze on her mother's. "Bye, Niobe."

"Bye, kid," Niobe whispered to her daughter as Kai hit the button.

_Fwip._

* * *

"I asked her, later. Of course I asked Ilia what Niobe said.

"Not like right then, not the moment we got to the Guildhall. That's not one of those things you just ask. Later, when it was the right time. When it was quiet and we were warm together and it had been a good day amongst the bad. And she told me.

"'You will always have a home with me.'

"Not on Makarzia. Not with the Geneslicers. A home with her.

"It was Niobe telling Ilia that she was the daughter of Niobe's heart too. That wherever Niobe went in the future, Ilia would have a home there.

"I'd have felt jealous, but... I think by then Niobe and I both just knew that was true between us anyway.

"Thinking about it, maybe I never needed to say that fourth word after all."


	17. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Kai wakes up.

∞, Sevenday, 08:45 (Guildhall universal time)

Ilia stumbled as she came out of the portal, and Kai managed to heft her up a little and get her moving forward properly as they hit the floor with uneven stride. She'd never understood quite why the Guild did it like that.. beacon pull on one end, portal on the other... but presumably they knew what they were doing. They were the Guild.

She tried to keep Ilia moving, wanting to prevent too much culture shock until they were beyond the flow of people coming out of the massive ring of portals. The portal annex of the Guild was like a sprawling combination between a luxury hotel lobby and the meeting of at least fifty travel disembarkation gates, a steady stream of sentients near-constantly issuing forth from the portals that swirled contained in their pretty beige arches, each one a million different shades of white coiling together around a flickering, transparent center of opalescence.

Kai got them moved a little further towards the job desks... walls of sitting-height desks manned by people in smart little suits, looking as much like a particularly large and well-staffed bank as a place where people took jobs of near-infinite description, ranging from saving entire planets from annihilation to killing a newborn demigod.

There was a sort of buffer area of couches and chairs there, places for people to browse job board tablets or the big holoscreens floating above some of the tables. She stopped there, letting Ilia stare at the flow of people. They didn't really look a lot different than Makarzia's night creatures, really, just more of a... professional air about a lot of them. But the range of species walking by even in just the arrival annex put Tailtown to shame.

Kai looked around at all of it, how... clean, how professional, how well-lit, no matter how scruffy and disreputable the people walking through it were. At times it had been a refuge, a nice place to sit and be warm and surrounded by like minded people for a while as she pondered a job, trying not to think about how the old man was going to spend the money she earned.

Now it was just a passing-through point.

Idly, just to give Ilia a moment more to acclimate, she fished the guest pass out of her pocket. As she'd suspected, it had gone flat and dark, the Guild rosette in the corner no longer glowing. She almost tossed it into a nearby trash can, but for some reason slid it back into her pocket.

For a moment she considered saying to hell with it... getting Ilia her cert couldn't be that hard, they'd just grab a job, head off, go work on their own. Who needed Remnant? They'd be a pair of badass mercs. Just her and Ilia against the multiverse, fuck yeah.

... But that wasn't what Niobe had asked of her. She'd asked her to take Ilia to Remnant in the hopes that she'd be safe. And, hopefully, actually send some valuable recruits Tailtown's way.

"Hey!" she called to a merc she recognized as he walked out of the job desk area and turned towards the portal annex elevators. "You seen Grey anywhere around, man?"

The huge shaggy being turned, gesturing with one limb so hairy that his fingers were virtually invisible. "Over in the cafeteria, last I saw him!"

"Cool dude, much thanks, the Force be with you an' shit!" she called back before snagging Ilia's arm to make sure they didn't get separated in the light press of the crowd. "C'mon, this way."

"Uh, you understood that?" Ilia said, staring at Kai with slightly wide eyes between glancing back over her shoulder to where the other merc had gone.

"His accent's not that thick, why?"

"Uhhhh... it sounded like he just said 'Hrar-arn, hrarrn' to me?"

"... Oh, right. Remind me to pick up a handful of translator nano injectors before we leave, those are always useful."

She made her way to one of the nearby areas. There were a handful of basic amenities that were simply Guildhall owned and operated, placed where they were the easiest to access, such as the cafeteria that was conveniently near the return portal annex, job desks, and elevators to the departure portal booths. 

The cafeteria was fairly large, but not quite as fade-into-the-distance immense as the job desks. Kai strolled along the tables, keeping an eye out, until she spotted a figure sitting alone at one of the tables, a cigarette at a low angle between its lips and wafting a slow stream of smoke upward from the tip.

Grey Heliotrope's hair was thick and curly, enough that the short feline ears he possessed atop his head in addition to the Human-like ones on the sides almost disappeared into it; it fell long around his shoulders as well, and every time she'd seen him he looked like he was just in that stage of 'Gonna need a haircut soon'. (Not that she had room to talk.) He was on the pretty side of damn good-looking... in fact it would have been easy for him to pass as a woman with just the faintest touch of makeup and the right clothes.

From what she'd heard about him, that was a particularly suicidal thing to suggest to him.

His eyes were the color of steel, and currently as dull and flat as the unpolished silver of the bracers around his forearms and covering the backs of his hands. Like most mercs, he wore an operator coat... a particular style of jacket featuring sharp angles and extra straps, the style named for the inhabitants of a world called Terra that had helped popularize it. His was a dark white, just almost dark enough to match his name, the collar trimmed with fur, the bottom coming to his ankles. Below it he wore a simple skintight high-collared shirt with a thin purple armored vest, the material barely thicker than the shirt, and simple black slacks and boots.

He was very beautiful, and not a little famous, and when he looked at Kai there was the briefest flash of murderous hate in his eyes. Not at who she was... at what she was.

* * *

"'Grey Bloody Claws'.

"Even in the Guild, people who get nicknames like that usually aren't the sort you want to hang around with.

"Grey wasn't even so much an assassin as a slaughterer-for-hire. Entire gangs, military units, or housing projects were his specialty. There was a lot of talk that even if you didn't hire him for that, you might get it as a freebie.

"There were tons of rumors about him, like any merc who achieved a modicum of fame. That he'd been kept as a slave in everything but name when he was young. Not chipped, not even collared, but a slave all the same. That he'd been abused... more than that, used.

"That a Guild merc found him and took him out of that life, taught him to be a merc himself. That Grey had repaid her by killing her in cold blood on a mission and leaving her body to rot. That he'd then used his special abilities to become one of the most ruthless and deadly mercs the Guild currently had to offer.

"But like I said to Ilia earlier... his reputation was conflicted.

"There were other rumors that said he was generous and helpful to people in bad situations. That he was always eager to bring in potential mercs and help them out with getting certified. That if you went on a mission he'd do anything to bring you back alive with him.

"There were also rumors that said he'd walk away and leave you to die without a second thought.

"Honestly, I didn't have any trouble believing that both of them were true. That all of it was true. I'd learned in my time in the Guild and on Makarzia that people were rarely Good or Evil, Heroes or Villains, but were good and bad by turns, as circumstances and their demons warranted.

"And considering how Grey instinctively reacted to me every time we met, to just the smell and motion and sight that told him I was Human, just that split second, that part of a heartbeat of murderous hate... I didn't have to imagine a whole lot about what circumstances might be when he made the decision to leave someone or fight for them.

"Grey was awake already, y'see... but he didn't want to be. He'd spent the last years of his life in a waking dream where he was, like me, just looking ahead to the next day. Doing whatever was in front of him. Whatever came to him at the time.

"Change was hovering over the heads of both of us, though."

* * *

Before anyone else would have even noticed it was there, the hate cleared from Grey's eyes, replaced with something very almost like a bit of a sparkle as he smiled genially. "Well well well, Red! It's been awhile, hm?" He plucked the cigarette from his mouth and snubbed it out in a nearby ashtray, adding, "Were you looking for little ol' me?"

"I was indeed," Kai answered just as breezily, tucking her hands in her pockets. "Grey, this is my friend, Ilia Amitola."

Grey's feline ears perked just a little at the name, eyeing the brown-skinned girl up and down briefly, which caused her to look like she was resisting the urge to shrink behind Kai. His nostrils flared almost imperceptibly before he snorted. "Oh, a fellow Faunus, hm? Another remnant of Remnant, as it were?"

"... Yeah," Ilia muttered, looking like she was having more serious reservations than ever about this whole idea.

"Here, Grey," Kai said, as much to take Grey's focus off of Ilia as anything, drawing out the envelope and holding it up between two fingers before proffering it. "This is from Niobe."

His ears twitched, and his expression turned slightly more serious as he accepted it, breaking the seal and pulling out the old-fashioned folded paper inside, opening the letter and reading over it, steely eyes seeming far more attentive than normal. Then he yawned negligently as he rose to his feet, sliding the letter into his pocket.

"Alright, sure, job accepted. I've got coordinates for Remnant. Menagerie, in fact," he added, flashing a smirk at Ilia. "They already explained the multiverse thing to you, right? That it might not be the same Remnant you come from?"

"Yeah, I get it," Ilia muttered sourly.

"As long as everything's clear." Grey turned his steel-colored eyes to Kai, smirk tinging a bit with a leer. "Since Niobe asked as a special favor, I'll stay at least until I know you're situated. Which means I want to stop and get a few packs, just in case. I assume you're short as usual, Kai? Want me to buy you a few as well?" 

"I've got money for my own smokes this time, Grey," Kai answered, deciding to mostly ignore his half-antagonistic flirting. A statement that was, in fact, true for once since Niobe had given Kai a number of credits on an account card before they said their goodbyes.

"Can't blame a guy for assuming," he declared airily. "3B?"

"Yeah."

Widely referred to as 3B, the store in question wasn't Guild-owned, meaning they had to go down a level to where the third party shops started. It was, however, fairly massive and had virtually everything one could need for the basic day-to-day needs of traversing the multiverse doing merc-y things.

Kai, however, had things in mind other than just loading up on smokes and ration packs.

"Whattya think?" she said a short time later, grinning at the absolutely adorable sight in front of her.

"I love it!" Ilia declared happily, her specks having turned faintly orange as she whirled back and forth, watching the swish of the long coat. As operator coats went it was fairly simple, thin but rainproof, its hood hidden away inside its raised collar. As a plus it came with dimensional pockets already on it, indicated by the white lining around the insides of the pockets. "I mean, I'll have to take it off if I want to stealth, but it looks so cool!"

"You look good," Kai asserted, resting a hand atop her friend's head and wobbling it around a bit in a circle. "If we weren't heading right to Remnant I'd say we should have you do a certification run, but since we won't be staying, not much point. You look a proper merc though."

"Thanks." Ilia's orange specks turned a little pink as she drew the collar in around her face.

"Got the tag?" Kai accepted the coat's tag and headed up for the counter, stepping up in front of the basket full of ration packs she'd already set up there before diverting so Ilia could check the look and fit of her new coat. "Hey, you still stocking Mako Rods?"

"Yup. How many packs you want?" the Tellarite behind the counter asked, stepping down from his steps behind the register and moving to the particularly large case behind him.

"Man you sell 'em by the carton at all? Aw yis let's do that shit my dude," Kai murmured with a gleam in her eye as the employee pulled out the somewhat antiquated-style cigarette carton and waved it.

"I cannot believe you still smoke that shit," Grey said flatly, shaking his head.

"All cigarettes are shit, may as well smoke some I think are fun." Kai slid the carton into one of her larger pockets after separating a pack and tucking it into an easier to access one. 

"Good on ammo?"

"Good as I can be without going overboard."

Something flickered in Grey's steel-colored eyes. "There isn't a lot of going overboard for Remnant, Red."

"... Yeah, most of my stuff has replimags, Grey, I'm good," she assured him, then smirked and lifted her katana a bit. "Besides, this doesn't run out of ammo."

"You're not gonna want to get close enough to a Grimm to use that as you are," Grey said rather flatly.

Kai glanced at Ilia, who she noticed seemed distinctly worried now. Better to just shrug it off, then, rather than just make it worse.

Soon they were stepping out into the maze of the portal annex. Well, not really a maze... there was only one path in and out, it just certainly felt like one with how the path wound back and forth through the largely featureless white walls and doors that led to outgoing portal rings, black panels on them showing whether they were ready, on cooldown, or reserved. They'd been walking for almost a minute when Ilia suddenly blurted, "Um!"

"Yeah, s'up?" Kai asked as she turned back to her friend, Grey stopping as well with a mildly aggravated roll of the eyes.

"Kai... um... before we go, I think there's something we should do," Ilia murmured, shifting back and forth on her feet. "Grey's right about Remnant being really dangerous, and I'm worried. This will help you survive, so..."

Grey blinked... then snorted, drawing Kai's curious gaze to him. "Shit, you're gonna Awaken her? Here, now?"

"She needs it!" Ilia snapped, scowling at him, the annoyance at least seeming to draw her out of the nerves. She took a deep breath, then looked at Kai. "I want to activate your Aura."

"Aura?" Kai quirked a brow, looking at first Ilia, then Grey. "That's the stuff that supposedly lets you pull off a lot of the bullshit that you supposedly do that supposedly makes you all superhero-like, right?"

"You didn't need quite so many 'supposedly's in there, Red," he grumbled. "But yes, Aura is an energy field that lets me do a hell of a lot, because I'm really good with mine and I have a lot of it."

"I can teach you to use yours too, Kai," Ilia urged. "Just... please. So you're safer."

Kai hesitated. She'd seen a lot in her time, enough to know that 'superpowers' were obviously real, but having anything that could even vaguely be called that applied to her just seemed... wrong. But Ilia was silently pleading with those pretty blue eyes, so finally with a sigh she nodded, "Sure."

"I mean it's probably not a bad idea," Grey allowed with a shrug. "If I have the time I'll give you a few pointers too."

Ilia stepped forward, slowly raising her hands towards Kai's cheeks... then hesitating. "Um," she said softly. "There's... words. They're the words that were said to me, and they... I'm not sure how much I believe in the path the woman who said them to me was on anymore, but..." Ilia took a breath, huffed it out. " _ She _ still meant a lot to me. And the words meant a lot to me. So, um... don't laugh?"

Kai found herself smiling warmly. "I won't laugh, Ilia," she assured the younger woman. "And neither will Grey, if he knows what's good for his balls."

Grey made a sound somewhere between a choke and a chuckle. (Chokle? Kai would have to remember that one.)

Ilia returned the warm smile, but as her eyes slid closed and she drew Kai's forehead down to touch hers, her expression turned solemn. "... From shadows we descend upon the world. No matter how dark the night is, we will shine like stars. We reach out to each other, take hold of one another's hands. We rise and rise again, like the moon, shattered but strong, battered but alive, and we will never submit again."

She could somehow feel the words that Ilia was speaking, not just on her ears, and not through the psycomms, but as if they were slipping through her. As if they were sliding inside and bringing a little bit of Ilia with them. Curling deep down inside her, shimmering bright and rippling through a hundred prismatic colors.

It passed through her mind, calling up an image of a beautiful, rather harsh-looking woman with brown skin, black hair, and her arms marked with stripe tattoos, her hands on Ilia's cheeks and speaking to her. And then the woman wasn't beautiful and harsh-looking and marked, but small with wet cheeks and a broken arm, a golden-eyed man with a thick black mane resting his hands on her cheeks and whispering to her, and then the man was a boy, and a man that looked much like him was resting a hand atop his head and speaking different words, and it slipped on back, countless others in a chain, until Kai found herself staring into the silver eyes of a dark-skinned woman with a feral, wolfish smile, her face marked with tattoos, her hair thick and wild and daubed with grease and blood to turn it black and red.

"Wake up," the silver-eyed woman said simply.

And Kai woke up.

She sucked in a hard breath, an echo of the first breath she'd ever taken as that scintillating, prismatic string inside her burst outward and turned into a blaze of scarlet that filled up her entire being. Something was destroyed inside of her and reborn outside of her, and she felt a rush across her entire skin, a full-body tingle that almost had her trembling.

"I... did I do it right?" Ilia asked nervously, lowering her hands.

"Yeah. Yeah, you did it right," Grey murmured, something like respect tinging his voice as he stared at the both of them

"I..." Kai raised her hands, stared at them, then looked around. At the walls, at Ilia, at Grey. "I feel like..." She flexed her fingers, staring at them. "... Like everything looks different but I can't even say how. Like everything's the same but..." Her voice went soft. "Like nothing's the same anymore."

"You'll get used to it," Grey assured her, chuckling just a bit. "... Ah," he added, spotting a booth with a blank panel and crossing to it. He checked his comm, then began tapping in coordinates. "Alright, these coordinates are, like I said, for Menagerie. It's fairly crowded and we'll come out right in the main thoroughfare... ah, though, looks like we'll get there well into the night so it shouldn't be too bad."

"You'll like Kuo Kuana, Kai," Ilia said with a smile as the somewhat dazed redhead started to focus again. "It's beautiful."

"Yeaaaaah, about that," the other Faunus said dryly, turning to them with his finger hovering over the 'Engage Coordinates'. "Maybe keep the hood up, Red, and well forward. Enough that people can assume the ears are real, huh?"

"Oh." Ilia drooped slightly. "Um... I guess that's right," she muttered.

Kai sighed and shrugged, doing as bid and hauling her hood forward a little. "Okay, okay, let's go."

Grey nodded, tapping the control, the booth's door sliding open and revealing the portal hovering in its simple metal arch. All three stepped forward, Grey taking the lead and passing through first, Kai and Ilia on his heels.

And stepping instantly into a panic.


	18. Chapter 14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Kai gets to go to a beautiful tropical paradise but it's on fire.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So here we are. They finally arrive on Remnant.
> 
> Just to be clear on what I've implied earlier, this Remnant is an AU before Kai ever sets foot on it. It's mostly a lot of little changes, and rearrangement of things to fit certain elements better. (The Great War is further in the past, for one thing.) It branched some point in Remnant 1's past, and while it's wound up broadly the same, it also has a number of differences that are just "butterfly flaps".

December 16, 244 AGW, 11:45 PM (Remnant 4482)

"What the shit?!" Grey snarled.

People rushed around them, some screaming, others desperately trying to calm them down. Stretched out ahead of them was what looked like a tropical settlement of some kind, buildings scattered amongst palm trees, surrounding a particularly large mansion... which was on fire.

Grey's eyes settled on the house, and something like sincere worry flickered in them. "Shit! The Chief's house!"

"BLAKE!" Ilia screamed in abject terror, instantly tearing off through the crowd towards the burning building, using her smaller height and slighter build to weave between people at speed and almost instantly disappearing.

"Ilia, stop!"  _ Ilia! _ Kai added over the psycomms, to no effect. She gritted her teeth as someone knocked into her hard enough to make her stagger, and was surprised when Grey's hand snapped out to wrap around her wrist to keep them from being separated.

"Red! C'mon, we've gotta help the chieftain!" he called, something almost like desperation in his eyes.

"Then get us the hell out of this fucking crowd!" she shouted back.

Grey gritted his teeth, and with a particularly feline yowl he launched himself into the air, a flicker of something both dark and bright flashing around his legs as he somehow reoriented in midair, tossing Kai off to the side and tumbling the opposite direction.

The abrupt nature of the flight should have had her landing rough, maybe rolling if she could manage. And yet somehow there was a sense of exactly when she was going to hit, and Kai managed to tuck into a roll and come up to her feet, already running across the rooftops and towards the burning home.

'What the fuck?' she thought distantly as, almost without thinking, she leapt down from the rooftop as easily as if it had been a cinder block. But she didn't have any time to think about what she'd just done as she saw the flapping of a black coat rushing through the front door. "Dammit, ILIA!"

Kai and Grey rushed after her, and found themselves in blaze that was already starting to consume the house, burning rafters already starting to groan and buckle. There were a number of people in white masks gathered around, temporarily scattered by some of the falling roof, and a large, bare-chested man slumped unconscious on the floor, arms splayed and thick mane of black hair matted with sweat.

'I know him,' Kai thought with the briefest flash of memory, before it was gone, flitted away like someone else's dream.

"Go! Find the kid!" Grey snapped as he rushed to the man's side, the bracers on his arms sprouting numerous miniature panels that slid down over and covered his hands, tapering into long, wicked claws at the tips. "I'll help the chief!"

Kai nodded quickly and rushed on, dashing through the archway and into the next room. The first thing she saw was a dark-haired woman somewhere between her and Ilia's age, feline ears atop her head and yellow eyes wide, her body stiff and frozen even as she knelt protectively over the unconscious form of a similar-looking older woman. 

'Amygdala hijack,' Kai thought, recognizing the symptoms. The 'why' wasn't hard to guess, either, as she saw with a mingling of shock and heartbreak. Because Ilia was fighting...

... with Ilia.

"YOU'RE A LIE!" the coatless Ilia shrieked, her weapon glowing yellow between its segments and crackling with electricity as she lashed out. "You're some lie someone made! I know what I have to do! I know what I am! I know what I'm fighting for!"

"This isn't what I want anymore!" the Ilia in the operator coat cried in reply, blocking the lash of the other Ilia with her unlit foil. "I want peace! I want  _ equality _ ! You're just a nightmare I had for most of my life, and I'm ready to wake up from you, you hateful  _ monster _ !"

" **Life** is a  **nightmare** !" the other Ilia howled, tears actually streaming down her face as she tried with everything she had to kill this invasive echo of herself.

Kai forced herself to yank her gaze away from the fight and shouted to the black-haired woman. "Hey!" Yellow eyes snapped to her, staring without quite seeing. "Get your mom the hell out of here! I'll save Ilia,  _ go _ !"

There was just the briefest of hesitation before the black-haired woman nodded quickly, shrugging out of her white coat and wrapping it around the unconscious one, hefting her up and rushing past Kai.

But the momentary distraction of Kai's call and the other woman's movement had opened up one of the Ilias... and she screamed as the crackling lash of the other's weapon struck against her chest and knocked her sprawling.

"NO!" Kai screamed, rushing forward, her hood dropping back with the motion.

* * *

'Oh gods oh Dust oh brothers what is happening,' Blake Belladonna thought desperately to herself, barely forcing herself not to tremble enough to run through the fire and flame.

She jerked to a halt in the other room, eyes wide at the sight of her father lying unconscious, being defended by a viciously snarling man she had never seen before, his claws marked with blood despite his opponents all being Aura active. "Dad!"

The stranger's eyes snapped towards her, flashing steel, a flicker of something that terrified her down to her soul in them before he called, "Go on, I've got him, get out!"

'I'm sorry Dad,' Blake thought, squeezing her eyes shut for a half a heartbeat before rushing forward again. Her father would want her to get her mother to safety, but she'd come back, she'd come back.

She wasn't running away ever again... even if she was going crazy.

* * *

"Ilia, for the love of the Dragon do not make me do this!" Kai called over the roar of the flames and the sounds of the house steadily dying around them. She stood between her downed friend and the dimensional alternate, the local Ilia scowling darkly as she crouched, trying to figure this new arrival out.

"Take a breath, think about what you're doing. I  _ know _ you don't want to hurt anyone, I know you're just dying inside of pain." The tears on Kai's face felt even hotter than the flames around her... when had she even started crying? "Dammit Ilia I know this isn't who you are, you just have to know it too. Please."

'Please don't make me fight you. I don't want to fight Ilia, any version of Ilia. Please.'

She could see the flicker of it in Ilia's face. The words hitting home, at least a little. Saw the eyes shift back and forth, the slight movement of her body, parting of her lips, the barest beginnings of 'Dear god what have I done?'

Then blue eyes tracked back to sweaty red hair and red eyes, and not an animal feature in sight. And her lips pulled back from her teeth in a snarl.

"What do you know,  _ human _ ?!"

"Ilia," Kai whispered in misery.

And then all she could do was fight.

The local Ilia howled as she darted forward, jabbing and sweeping with her foil. Her rage clouding her judgment and Kai's familiarity with her fighting style should have handily given her the win, but for two factors. The smaller was that every time she blocked or deflected the foil's thrusts with her sword, she felt an electric jolt pass through it and into her hands, answered by a crackle of scarlet light around them.

The bigger was that she absolutely, utterly did not want to hurt her opponent.

But she had to do something, she knew as she blocked and dodged, unable to even step out from between the local Ilia and her friend for fear what might happen. Behind her was her best friend, her very first and only best friend, twitching and shuddering on the floor, unable to move or defend herself. Ahead was a snarling wounded animal, unable to think through her pain, knowing only that there was pain and anything unfamiliar in front of her might hurt her more. And the world was on fire all around them.

She had to do something. If she didn't, one Ilia would die... and the other's soul would die.

'Forgive me,' she thought as she drew back, readied, saw the local Ilia do the same, readying a dual thrust. And then they leapt forward.

And Kai's katana clattered to the floor.

"What?!" Ilia yelped as she was born to the ground, Kai thudding down atop her, arms wrapped tightly, the Faunus girl's blue eyes going wide as she saw the bloody length of her own rapier jutting from the stranger's back. And then they widened further at the words that the redhead said.

"I'm sorry."

"W-what?"

"I'm sorry they hurt you. I'm sorry I wasn't there for you. I'm sorry it hurts so much..." Kai closed her eyes, feeling the tears slip out of them. "I'm sorry I wasn't there. But I'm here now. I won't leave you. I'm sorry."

"W-what are you... what... who even are you... why... why?" the other Ilia croaked, her own eyes filling with tears as she stared, uncomprehending.

And then Kai was being hauled up, to her feet, off the foil, though a hand quickly pressed to the side of her stomach where it had been penetrated. "Kai! Please be okay!" Ilia half-wailed.

"I'm okay," the redhead hissed, giving her head a quick shake despite the pain. "I'm alright." Then she looked down at the other Ilia who was staring up at them both... and held out a hand.

"I know it hurts... so share the hurt with us... and it won't hurt as much anymore."

Kai wasn't even sure what she was saying, she was half-delirious with pain, heat, and growing blood loss. And yet the other Ilia stared up at her still...

... and then clapped a glove hand into hers, hauling herself to her feet.

One of the Ilias grabbed their weapons, Kai wasn't even sure which one at this point because her vision was blurring, and supported the redhead on either side as they hurried towards the door.

It looked like all of the masked guys were down. The only three people upright were Grey, still standing protectively near the big man, though his face showed uncertainty now, and a pair of robed men, one with tall, fluffy vulpine ears and the other with a tail, though they were otherwise identical.

"He betrayed everything we stood for, Grey," one of the men said. "He would have let the humans walk all over us because he lost the will to fight. If he had no will to fight... how could he lead us? How could he protect us?"

"You know what we're saying is true, Grey," the other added, his voice that of a serpent despite the fluffiness of his tail. "If he wouldn't fight, it was just inviting the humans to do as they like with us. As they did with you."

Grey's head turned a little, eyeing the big man a little, a wavering in his eyes. Kai could see that he was on the verge of being convinced. That it wouldn't take much for the robed men to bring him to their side.

* * *

"Time was, I'd have just fought him. Seen the impending turn, hauled out my sword, gone to town.

"Grey wasn't much of anyone to me at that point. He'd bought me a meal or two, always so he could aggressively flirt and smarm and hold it over my head, seemed like. We had nothing against each other but no reason to stand for each other either.

"Except that I was tired of not standing up.

"I'd already decided before I ever set foot on Remnant that I wasn't passing these moments by anymore. I wasn't walking away.

"Grey wasn't looking uncertain and considering because he was evil, or just made wrong. I may not have known him then, but I somehow knew that. Maybe it was the look on his face when Ilia awakened me. Maybe it was the desperate desire to help in his eyes when he saw the burning building. Or the way he told me to go find Ilia instead of just ignoring me once he found his own goal. 

"He was looking uncertain because he was hurting. Because someone was telling him something that could stop the hurt. Just like the Ilia I'd just fought, Grey was in pain, and just wanted the pain to stop.

"It was time to step up and help him stop it."

* * *

"Grey. I'll fight with you."

His head whipped over, steely eyes shocked as Kai drew herself up, forcing herself upright despite the blood smearing across her. A hand came out to take her katana from one of the Ilias as she moved to the feline Faunus man's side.

"I'm with you. If you want to fight to keep Faunus from being oppressed, I'm with you. If you want to fight to be seen as a person, I'm with you. Equality, dignity, hope, a future, I will fight with you and I will die with you," she told him, looking into his eyes. "Not a cause, or a flag, or a symbol... I'll fight with  _ you _ ."

Then she looked aside, glaring at the robed duo. "Ask that pair of mealy-mouthed fucks if they'd do the same."

Grey's head turned towards the duo... and the soothing, placating smiles were just a little too smooth and a little too late.

"Y'know, I've been fighting a long, long damn time," he said slowly, twisting his wrists, a pair of slender gunbarrels extending from each of his bracers above the backs of his hands. "Maybe it's time I started fighting the right people."

"Damn straight," Kai snarled, raising her sword. Ilia fell in beside her, raising her foil.

A moment later the other Ilia did the same.

* * *

"Mom, mom, just breathe," Blake urged as Kali Belladonna gasped and drew in a breath, the older feline Faunus trembling a little. Then the young Huntress's head snapped up at the sound of rafters starting to collapse. "NO!"

Just then figures were silhouetted by the flames behind the door, moving forward at a hurried shuffle. The redheaded woman she'd seen... not another feline Faunus after all, with her hood down... staggered forward ahead of them all, a hand pressed to her stomach. Behind came the stranger she'd seen, supporting her father on one side, the other supported by... two... Ilias.

"Dad!" she called, standing as they made their way over, Kali rising as well and reaching out shaky hands.

"My husband, is he-?!"

"The chief's okay," the steel-eyed Faunus grunted, helping to set him down.

Kali blinked, then whispered, "Grey? Is that... is that you?"

He flinched, and gave a strained smile as he raised one finger to shush her... then winced as he realized it was a blood-smeared claw, quickly untransforming his weapon and stepping back, before turning and slipping into the night.

"What is this? What's going on here?" Blake demanded, albeit without much force.

"It's a long story," the redhead muttered, before staggering in place, only remaining on her feet when Kali managed to press up against her side.

"Kai! We need to get you help! You're-!" the Ilia in the coat cried as she rushed forward... then blinked, brushing her fingers over the Human's blood-smeared bare stomach. "Perfectly... fine?"

"... Huh." The red-eyed woman glanced down. "That does seem to be the proper number of holes in me. What the fuck."

"You're okay," the coated Ilia whispered, her eyes shining.

Blake pulled her eyes away from the pair as the other Ilia approached her, tears streaking through the soot on her face. "Blake... I'm  _ so _ sorry," she murmured, her voice starting to crack. "I... I just... I..."

"You'll figure out the words. And I'm pretty sure Blake will forgive you."

Blake blinked, turning towards the other Ilia, who'd turned towards them and was smiling a little now.

"What'll take you awhile is managing to forgive yourself. I'm still working on it."

"... I don't know what's happened," Blake said slowly, feeling herself start to smile. "But I can see that whatever's happened to you... you've grown up." She inhaled deeply, then let it out and nodded. "I'm going to show you that I've grown up too. I'm not going to run, I'm going to fight. I'm going to rally the people, and we're going to Haven to stop the White Fang!"

The red-eyed woman stared at her for a second... then let out a huff and rolled her eyes, head lolling to one side. "Could I, like, at least get a fucking shower first before we head off to our next calamity?"

Blake blinked, her ears laying down a little.

Such language.


	19. Interlude 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Kai has decided to stand up.

"Mikon told me I'd have to get rid of the wall in my heart. She never told me what to do if I had it crushed for me in an instant.

"I'm not sure if my Awakening was normal or not. Grey told me he'd never done it for anyone else, so he couldn't say if it was different for people from Remnant or not.

"Maybe it was my age. Or the weird blending of ages that my situation leads me to be. Twenty-five, ten, more, less, who knows. Most people on Remnant apparently have theirs awakened pretty young if they're going to.

"For me, having my soul externalized felt pretty literal in a lot of ways. It left me more emotionally raw... in a good way, sometimes. In a bad way others, maybe.

"My give-no-fucks armor was now just a façade I could call on when I needed it. I might be able to wear it for others but I couldn't fool myself anymore.

"I had a whole bunch of fucks to give.

"I had a whole lot to make up for.

"And I wouldn't call it guilt, necessarily, just... the realization that the way I'd been living my life wasn't right. And because it wasn't right I wanted to change it. I'm not talking about the stealing, the larceny, even the killing really.

"I mean the callousness.

"That wasn't who I was. I like to think it's never who I was, but... who I was, it was never really a solid thing until then, I don't think.

"Ilia didn't just wake me up when she brought forth my Aura, she locked me in as a person. In a way I could just as easily call that my birthday, but... no. It was definitely the day I met her. The changes started then, they just came to a head when she put her forehead to mine and spoke the words.

"I still had a few pieces of my identity left to find, though. And one of them would be gifted to me by a very, very old man who was about to make a lot of people cry."


	20. Chapter 15

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Kai expounds on the multiverse and dislikes the ocean.

December 17, 244 AGW, 1:33 PM (Remnant 4482)

"Ugh."

Kai leaned her forearms on the railing of the boat heavily, squinting out over the blue. This was bullshit.

"Seasick?" Blake asked gently, smiling sympathetically as she approached from further up the deck, followed by the bare chested blonde form of her friend Sun Wukong.

"I've got tips for that from the last trip!" Sun declared, shooting Kai a double-fingergun. "Step one, puke! Step two...! ... I never did figure out step two."

Kai snorted, grinning at him. "Hey man, maybe step two is 'show up for a fight'."

Sun made a face. "I keep telling people, I was held up! Like literally! Twenty White Fang, big tough bruisers, show up and they're like 'Hey buddy, your life or your life!'," he added in a silly, booming voice, jabbing a pair of finger-pistols at her. "I kind of had my hands full, even with two extra pairs on call!"

"It was fifteen last time," Blake noted dryly, turning her back to the rail and leaning her elbows on it.

"Fifteen, twenty, look, I didn't take a firm count, I don't know how many of them it would have taken to kick my butt but they _almost_ brought enough!"

Kai chuckled, deciding to interrupt another one of Sun's tales of his own heroism. "Nah, I'm not seasick, my stomach's fine. It's my brain that doesn't know what to do with this view." She looked back out at the rippling, multi-hued blue. "There aren't any oceans on Makarzia, and somehow none of my jobs have ever taken me out on one."

Blake nodded slowly, then huffed. "Is it odd that I'm still having a hard time believing this whole 'Multiverse' thing? Even though we got on this boat with two different Ilia Amitolas?"

"Nah, that's stage three option one."

The feline Faunus blinked once. "Pardon?"

"Culture shock. Happens when someone is confronted with instant and distinctive proof of the multiverse, like coming face-to-face with their own alternate, or in your case seeing the same thing happen to someone else." Kai turned around, emulating Blake's own posture, and smirking just a bit as Sun eyed their displayed midriffs in a way that was not at all subtle but said he thought it was. "I've seen it before on other jobs, working with mercs who just happened to bump into their other selves."

"So there's... three stages, but...?"

"Three stages, the third's multiple choice. First stage, amygdala hijack, that was that thing where you felt like your whole body and brain froze up in rejection of what you're seeing."

"I'm familiar. Both with the term and the feeling," Blake muttered, making a bit of a face, Sun similarly poking his tongue out slightly. "Step two?"

"Brief born-again faith, using religion and deities as an appeal to understood reality."

"... Ahem. Right." Blake bobbed her head. "And you're saying I'm in one of the parts of stage three?"

"Stage three is either denial, weeping breakdown, or very rarely, brief euphoria."

Blake pursed her lips slightly, feline ears giving a twitch. "I wouldn't say I'm in _denial_. It's just hard to believe..." She trailed off, then sighed and rolled her eyes. "Oh fine, I'm in denial."

"Not me, I _totally_ accept it!" Sun declared cheerfully, spreading his hands and adding in a mystical whisper, "'Cause it's _cool_!"

Kai snickered. "It is kinda cool, isn't it?"

"Actually, speaking of cool things, would you mind if I took a look at your sword?" Blake asked as she straightened up. "I saw it a little when we were on Kuo Kuana, but I was curious to get a closer look."

The redhead hesitated only briefly before nodding and drawing the sheathed sword from inside her coat, passing it to Blake. "Sure, here."

Though she hadn't said anything, the other woman apparently picked up on Kai's attachment to the weapon, as she stepped further away from the railing before carefully unsheathing it. She looked it up and down, golden eyes curious. "The craftsmanship is beautiful. Old Mistralian, or maybe one of the outlier regions of Anima in style, but... look," she noted, turning to Sun and pointing a fingernail at the groove.

"Oh yeah that's not old Mistralian metal by a long shot, that's more modern Atlas stuff, but it's hand-hammered," Sun mused, rubbing his chin.

Kai blinked. "Huh, you guys know your stuff."

"We're not even the weapon nuts of our teams," Blake replied, eyes twinkling a little, before her smile turned a little sad as she glanced forward.

Sun tilted his head back and forth, leaning in closer and looking it up and down. "But where's the gun part?"

"Uh?" Kai raised her eyebrows as she straightened up and parted her coat to show the twin quickfire pistols at her sides. "Right here?"

Blake and Sun exchanged a glance. Then Blake slid the sword back into its sheath and offered it back. "I guess you really aren't from around here. Your style and even the way you move says you're a Huntress, but you're... missing some components," she admitted. "The things that are the biggest threat in most of the world... the creatures of Grimm... are very strong, and most of them are very fast. Though you don't want to get close to them, it can be difficult to fight them effectively at range, since a lot of them can dodge the heavier projectiles designed to take them out in one hit."

"When a Grimm gets up in your face, you usually don't have time to drop your gun and grab your melee weapon," Sun picked up with a shrug. "Plus then, you're gonna need your gun again soon, probably. Transforming weapons cut down the time you need to switch, and you've always got both on you. Hey, if you want, I've got a buddy who's really good at weapons design, maybe he could also-a-gun your sword for you!"

"I'll... keep that in mind," Kai murmured, fighting the urge to seem too protective as she tucked the sword back into the folds of her coat. "Where'd the Ilias get off to, anyway?"

"They went belowdecks," Blake said with a glance at the nearby door. "I suppose they needed to have a talk."

"I mean when you think about it, that's either a conversation where there's a lot to talk about or almost nothing to talk about, huh?" Sun suggested, eyeing the door as well.

"More the former. Even if they were the exact same up until the point that the Ilia I brought with me was in that Dust explosion, she's spent almost a year on Makarzia by now."

"She doesn't seem _that_ different," Blake mused after a moment.

"Apparently she didn't go out a lot, other than to occasionally run errands for Niobe or maybe visit markets and stuff. I asked some of the others and they said she spent a lot of time staring out the windows and up at the sky." Kai glanced up at the very, incredibly clear blue sky, which was somehow far more tolerable than the very, incredibly clear blue ocean. "... Guess it'd be damn easy to miss this, yeah."

"She seemed pretty confident when _I_ talked to her," Sun protested.

"Yeah, well... yeah," Kai agreed, grinning.

"So now we have two Ilias here, some other Remnant is without one, huh?" Sun wondered.

"Yup. Its loss," Kai declared.

Sun looked like he might want to protest that, but Blake gave him a look before he could do much more than move his lips a little.

"And there are versions of us on all these other Remnants," Blake mused, rubbing her chin.

"Maybe not all of them. Some of the variations can get pretty out there. Okay so look, as I understand it there's two different types of alternates, 'genetic alternates' and 'role alternates'." Kai paused in holding up two fingers, then rolled her eyes and lifted another. "And 'soul alternates' but I think that's bullshit."

"A genetic alternate is someone that's genetically the same?"

"Right," the redhead said, nodding to Blake. "Basically, whatever other differences, Ghira Belladonna and Kali Belladonna get together and have a kid. Now, the resulting Blake might be extremely different... or she, or he, might not even be 'Blake'... but they're still your alternate."

"So what's a 'role alternate'?" Sun asked, furrowing his brow.

"Opposite, pretty much. Someone who might not be the same at all... maybe Ghira hooked up with someone else, or maybe Kali did, maybe they have different parents altogether. But they still wind up filling Blake Belladonna's role in the world. They're in the White Fang, they're Ilia's confidant, they decide to save Haven, they're not Blake but they're doing Blake's thing."

"That's... very strange to think about," Blake admitted, hugging herself lightly. "But why do you think the 'soul alternate' thing is bull... nonsense?"

Kai started to answer, paused, eyed Blake, then shrugged and answered anyway. "Basically because it's got no real definition. It's neither of the other things, but the other person is so deeply _like_ you in some defining way that they're still your alternate. No shared genetics, role's different, but your souls are on the same wavelength or whatever. I mean, even being here, where people have externalized souls and stuff, I can't shake the feeling that's just a bunch of vague nonsense someone came up with to feel special."

"Huh. So how many other yous have you bumped into, running around the multiverse like that?" Sun asked curiously.

Kai stilled. Then, very nonchalantly, she shrugged and turned back around to look out at the ocean. "None. Seems like the multiverse decided one of me was enough. Or I guess even if I ran across an alternate me, chances are I wouldn't recognize her."

Blake's ears lay down slightly. "... Ilia... told me. Just a little bit, about your past." When Kai didn't look over, the Faunus woman sighed and turned to lean against the railing and look out as well. "I guess for all of Remnant's problems, at least we've eliminated slavery... literal slavery, anyway. Still too many people, especially in Mantle, wind up feeling like they're chained to poorly-paying jobs in the cities, abused and taken advantage of by their employers like the Schn-... the SDC. Or others. Or the governments." 

She lowered her head a little. "Humans as well as Faunus. It's easier to take advantage of us because we have fewer opportunities, but... there are humans out there suffering like we are, and I think maybe it's become a little too easy to overlook that. ... Something funny?" she asked in a mildly annoyed tone, glancing over.

"Nah, sorry," Kai murmured, stopping her soft snicker. "Just, you reminded me of something Niobe said... 'anything that can think can be a shit'." She noticed that both Blake and Sun gave a little shock reaction at the word, drawing back slightly. That was _weird_. "So why not make more settlements, live outside the cities? Are the Grimm really that bad?"

"They are," Blake murmured, shaking her head again. "People do try... they make new settlements, farms, even attempts at new Kingdoms. But it seems like, sooner or later, Grimm or bandits or some combination of the two does them in."

"Hey, that's just life," Sun asserted, shrugging as he leaned back against the railing, simian tail flitting back and forth. "Here today, gone tomorrow. You get used to it in Vacuo, the rest of Remnant has a few things to learn, I think. Like, hey, we just focus on getting by day to day... no one really cares that much about Human and Faunus when everyone's gotta deal with sinkholes and giant sand crabs all the time!"

Blake snorted softly. "I guess that's one way to achieve equality. And explains a lot about you, honestly."

"... I can't do that anymore," Kai asserted quietly, shaking her head, red eyes fixed out on blue water and blue sky. "I can't do day to day anymore. There has to be more to life than that."

The black-haired woman hesitated briefly, then smiled and reached out to lay a hand on Kai's back. "There is. And you're a part of it by coming to do this with us. This isn't even your world, but you're standing with us and fighting for it. That means a lot to me."

Before Kai could really think of what to say to that, she heard the door to the lower decks opening and turned to see a pair of near-identical young women emerging. Both a little relieved to get away from where the conversation had gone and at the easier way Ilia was moving, the redhead made her way over to meet 'her' Ilia, letting the other move to Blake and start speaking quietly.

"Talk go okay?"

"I... don't know how good you can call it, but... I think we're both feeling a lot better now." She looked towards the other three, where her alternate was now saying something to Sun, head bowed and shoulders slumped... then the coated Ilia grinned as Sun responded by ruffling the other's hair. "So much of what I did... was because I felt so awful being alone in the world. That no matter what I did, I didn't have a family anymore. Sienna, Adam, Fennec and Corsec, they all kept telling me the White Fang was my family, but it never... felt like one. ... Now I have a sister, I think." 

Ilia took a deep breath and let it out. "She and I are gonna be okay. Um, once we figure out something to do about our names," she added sheepishly.

"Rock-paper-scissors," Kai suggested instantly.

Ilia's nose wrinkled. "Oh come on."

"Hey, is there a really _good_ way to decide?" At Ilia's hesitation at that, Kai grinned. "If not may as well pick something simple."

"... Okay, point." Ilia rolled her eyes, then looked over, smiling again as Blake wrapped her arms around the other Ilia and hugged her tightly.

Kai smiled too, lowering her voice. "That Blake... she's pretty amazing, huh?"

"Yeah, she is," Ilia whispered.

"Can see why you had such a big fuckin' crush on her."

Ilia went still and made a low noise in her throat, her specks slowly shading to an almost luminescent pink. "Oh brothers she _told_ you," she groaned, clapping her hands to her face. "Oh god that was the one thing I most wanted to punch the other me in the face for, she just _blurted it out_ to Blake in the worst possible situation and I wanna diiiiie!"

"Relax, relax!" Kai said with a laugh, putting her hands on Ilia's shoulders and turning the younger woman towards her, red eyes twinkling. "Blake didn't tell me anything. I just figured it out myself."

"Um... y-you what?" Ilia squeaked, as if this didn't make it at all better.

"I'm just good at reading people. Every time you mentioned someone back on Remnant you wanted to see, your mouth moved a certain way and your eyes tilted a little. You screaming out her name and tearing off like you had to save your very soul when you thought she was in danger was a pretty good indicator too," Kai added dryly as Ilia ducked her head sheepishly. "I mean, I pretty much knew you were gay since we were walking back to the bunker after the rooftop."

"... ehhhhh?" Ilia whined softly.

Kai couldn't help it, she let out a small laugh, then leaned in, eyes alight. "You've really got a thing for girls' lips, don't you?" she said quietly. "You look at the belly, the chest, hips, but they always come back to the lips."

"Um." Ilia was gradually turning pink all over, her eyes darting around as if desperate not to rest anywhere at all. "Um. Um." Then she blinked, eyes widening as she stared. "W-wait, you could tell? You could tell when I was looking at-?!"

Just grinning, Kai leaned forward and kissed her friend on the forehead, Ilia making a sound not unlike an electric kettle coming to a boil. "I'm gonna go get some rest, Rainbow. Try not to set the ship on fire with that blush."

"You're so fuckin' mean, Kai," Ilia whined, which just made the redhead laugh even more.

* * *

"Yup, pretty sure that was the first time.

"'Rainbow'. Just kinda came out, and I don't think either of us thought that much about it. Both distracted by other things, and it was just a nickname after all. A natural one for a chameleon Faunus. Didn't mean that much more than the one the Slicers favored for her, 'lzrd', right?

"Nah. Nope. Nuh-uh.

"My Rainbow. The one who brought color to my life. The one that led me to the solid gold that was loving others. And one day, far off in the future, loving myself. 

"My Rainbow."

* * *

Kai trotted down the stairs and into the lower decks. There were a lot of Faunus already here, trying to rest up for the coming quick march and conflict themselves, or just being quietly nervous... probably trying not to be afraid, though.

Damn that was fucked up though.

They'd make landing on Anima in a location a few hours' jog from Mistral, specifically a place called Haven Academy. Kali Belladonna would go ahead with a smaller, faster force in hopes of rallying the Mistralian authorities, as well as assuring them that the Faunus militia approaching was there to help. Apparently Blake's asshole ex-boyfriend wanted to blow a school to kingdom come, and this was in general considered a bad thing. So off they went to war.

'Good call, Niobe.'

She found an empty set of blankets, started to ease down on it, and paused as she spotted someone lurking in the shadows. "So that's where you got off to."

Grey stepped forward a moment later. "Niobe did ask me to watch over you until you got settled. Heading off to this dumbass fight isn't exactly settled, so here I am."

"Uh-huh," Kai replied, not bothering to hide the 'pull the other one' tone of her voice as she settled and laid back. "And since when does Grey Bloody Claws run and hide from cute forty-something MILFs?" she added, tucking her hands under her head and closing her eyes.

"You watch your damn mouth," he snapped back.

Slowly, Kai peeked an eye open. "Am I having dimensional dysmorphia, or did you just defend someone's honor?"

Grey was silent for a bit. Then he sank down to sit next to her little bedroll. "Let's just say that I was born on Menagerie, and that the Belladonnas took care of every kid that they could and that needed it. I'm surprised she even remembered me, there were probably at least eight of us in and out of that house all the time."

"And yet she sounded like she hadn't seen you in a long time," Kai prompted when the silence stretched again.

"... I heard a bit of your conversation earlier, y'know." Grey glanced upward. "This is right below where you were standing, pretty much."

"Okay...?" Kai murmured.

"... I went looking."

Kai blinked, then sat up, propping herself up on her hands. "Wait, you actually deliberately went looking for your dimensional alternates?" 'What for?' she almost asked, but was a little afraid of the potential answer.

"What's it matter? There weren't any." Grey snorted softly, turning his wrist over and looking at the Guild comm built into the underside of one of his bracers. "I checked ten. Remnants 1028, 20,001, 3077, 6981, 5577, 11,111, 9001, 7777, 19,000, and... Remnant 2."

"Shit, you got that close to the prime?" Kai blinked again. "That must have been expensive as hell, without a job there."

"Mm-hmm, but it was my 'one more' try. But no... no Grey Heliotrope anywhere. He never existed. I..." he said with a soft, derisive snort as he leaned back against the hull. "Am an exclusive product of Remnant 4482. So... that feeling you feel when you think about the multiverse deciding it only needed one of you? Imagine it being confirmed."

Kai thought about that for a little while. Turned it over. Tried to think of what to possibly say to that. Finally, she suggested to the ceiling, "Maybe it got it right the first time."

Grey blinked. Stared at her. Then, slowly, he grinned. Actually, really grinned.

She'd never heard him laugh before.

It wasn't half bad.


	21. Interlude 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Grey's pain is discussed.

"I think of any of us, Grey had the most healing to do.

"His stuff wasn't... like any of the rest of us. They weren't just bad choices he made, schoolyard brawls with lasting consequences, passing up people in need, running away from someone, losing something.

"Grey had lived a life of two terrible, drawn-out traumas separated by a brief time of happiness. And he'd dealt with it by deliberately living his worst life.

"'Grey Bloody Claws' wasn't someone he wanted to be. It was someone he made up to be because he didn't want to be himself anymore. But he still did all of those things, and he'd have to live with it the rest of his life.

"It didn't seem to bother him that much. Seem to. But that was Grey. Pretty and sleek though he was, inside he was a mountain. He'd stood up to everything that had tried to break him, and he'd gone wrong, but he hadn't broken. He just needed someone else to finally be strong for him too.

"Someone told me that, later on. 'The strongest people always wind up needing someone to be strong for them.'

"So I stood up. I stood by him. Two of the multiverse's one-shots. And together we were a hell of a lot stronger than either of us had been when we were alone."


	22. Chapter 16

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Kai meets a very unhuggable bear, is unimpressed with everyone's drama, really pisses off Adam Taurus, and meets the main characters.

December 17, 244 AGW, 11:01 PM (Remnant 4482)

They were about an hour out from Haven when Kai came face-to-face with her first Grimm.

She'd heard fighting around the edges of the group before but it had always been fast, barely even stopping parts of the group from moving forward. Whatever it was, the militia members or one of the other fighters had it well in hand, and Kai rarely got to see anything but a bit black smoke wisping into the night from beyond the crowd.

But this one came right at her.

It loomed out of the night like it was made of it, big and speckled with bone spurs across its ink-black hide, its upper head enclosed in a red-marked skull-like covering that made it all the more hideous. It looked like a bear, but not a real bear, like someone had a nightmare where the concept of 'bear' and 'evil' just rose up out of their deepest brain to tear out their throat and send them screaming into wakefulness, but it was real, it was in front of her, and she knew, absolutely knew it wanted not a single thing in existence other than to kill her.

She froze.

Kai had never frozen in her life, but for the first time she experienced an amygdala hijack for herself. Her mind reeled, silently screaming, from the very concept of the thing in front of her and paralyzed her muscles, leaving her clutching her sword as if it were little more than a comfort blanket against impending death.

Sun Wukong saved her life.

He dove between her and the nightmare thing without hesitation, the red and gold staff in his hands twirling in a blur, smashing upward against the underside of its jaw to knock it reeling back. Flowing like water, his hands separated the staff into a pair of what looked distinctly like shotguns chained together at the handles, spinning and striking with them, each impact accompanied by the heavy report of a gunshot. The thing continued to reel until Sun rejoined his staff and leapt into the air, bringing it down with a heavy crunch on the mask, the physical nightmare crashing to the ground, black flesh starting to waft into the air and disappear like so much cigarette smoke in a steady breeze.

"You okay?" the simian Faunus asked breezily as he turned back to Kai, looking her up and down with gentle concern.

"Uh... y-yeah." She jerked a little, finally finding she was able to move again. "Fuck... I can't believe I froze."

He grinned and clapped a hand on her shoulder. "It's fine, it happens to everyone the first time they see a Grimm in person. Don't let it get to you." Then he nudged her on. "C'mon though, if we dwell on it the negative emotion will draw more."

"Right. Empathic hazards," Kai muttered, shaking her head and turning to resume the quick march.

Whatever entity had decided that creating a bunch of physical nightmares and then making them want to eat you even more if you got afraid, she vowed to punch them in the balls if she ever got the chance.

They arrived at Haven, and Kai watched as Blake went rushing ahead, taking to the rooftops. 'Oh my fuck she's gonna do a dramatic entrance, isn't she?' Kai thought as the rest of the militia filed through alleyways and streets, stopping a short distance away.

"ADAM! Stand  _ down _ !"

'Yup.'

She listened as her new friend and her ex exchanged a brief set of barbs, and on Blake's cry of "Not by myself!" everyone started marching forward.

'Legit feel like Sakai would be squealing like a kid at Dragontide if he were here,' Kai thought with an amused grin as next to her, Sun declared that Blake hadn't come alone, which was obvious enough.

"Who's there?" Adam snarled, taking hold of his sword, as if 'most of fucking Menagerie' weren't the obvious answer.

"Your brothers and sisters," Ghira intoned solemnly.

'Okay we will also accept that answer since it sounds badass,' Kai thought, grinning more.

Then the lawenoff showed up, or rather the 'Mistralian Police Force'. In flying boats. If she ever got back to Makarzia, Kai was going to have to try and get Sakai to forgive her just so she could tell him about this, he'd be building his own flying boat before she was done talking.

"Give it up, Adam, it's over," Blake declared, narrowing her eyes.

"... Then it's over for all of us," he snarled, bringing up what was obviously a detonator remote, flicking up the cap and pressing the button as his minions reeled in terror.

Then he blinked, his head whipping to the side to stare at the device as nothing happened...

... and then jerking his head back as a tangle of wires and a signal receiver smacked him right in his masked face.

"Kiss my ass, you son of a bitch!" the coated Ilia called, her hand still stretched out from the motion, the Ilia beside her having lost some amount of control over her jaw.

'Holy shit I love her so much,' Kai thought with a quiet guffaw into the side of her coat's hood.

Adam recovered quickly, glancing at his people who were all staring at him, then whirling to look at a big guy who, Kai was absolutely sure, had big glowing crystals growing out of his big fucking biceps. "What do we do?"

"... This is your mess," the huge man growled. "Fix it."

Then he got hardcore penetrated and yanked back through the already half-destroyed front of the building behind him.

'Okay that's a new one,' Kai thought, barely even having seen where the glowing harpoon had come from.

In the shock that followed, Adam wheeled around, then launched himself towards Blake, slicing towards her middle with his red ninjato... only for him to cut through something like a half-solid hologram, Blake reappearing at his side and driving him to the ground with a double-punch.

He rolled across the ground, coming up screaming "KILL THEM!"

And then it was a fight.

'I'm not hugging and getting penetrated by all of these assholes,' Kai thought, though the silent quipping had a grim edge even to her. Ghira's comment about these being brothers and sisters had gotten to her a little... she struck at weapons where she could, delivered kicks rather than stabs. Though she found even when she struck with the edge of the katana, most of them went down alive, cut maybe but not opened up like her strikes normally would have.

As the White Fang forces dwindled, Kai once more heard the particular snarl of Adam's voice that he seemed to reserve for Blake. She turned, spotting them on the edge of the fight, rushing over... and then rising up into an amble as Sun made his way over as well, seeming in no hurry. Fuck it, they were doing the cool dramatic thing again, and she wasn't gonna be any less cool than her new buddy.

"I've made powerful friends while you've been away!" Adam smugged, pointing a rifle that looked like it had previously been his sword's sheath at her.

'Tch, look at this edgelord asshole in his black outfit with zippers and his ninja sword and his gun, what an immature fucker,' Kai snorted mentally, brushing back her long black coat to make it easier to reach her dual pistols while resting a hand on the pommel of her katana.

"Oh yeah? Where?" Sun demanded as he stepped up on Adam's other side.

Kai strolled around off to the back a little, taking in how Adam suddenly started giving off nervous body language as well as angry when she got beyond a certain distance from Sun. 'Hm, interesting. Blind on that side?' Aloud, she said, "Seems like all of the badass new friends here are Blake's."

Adam turned slightly, raising his sword, not quite managing to point it right at her as he tried to cover the whole area. Yup, blind in one eye. Kai could see his lips press into a thin line, jaw work... the signs of someone trying to think up the most hurtful thing they could to say.

"Tell me. How many more of your fiery  _ human _ friends am I going to have to dismember before you learn your lesson, Blake?"

Kai could see that whatever that meant to Blake, it hit and it hurt. She did her best to stand tall, but the deep pain in her eyes would have been obvious even to someone that wasn't adept with body language.

It pissed Kai off.

"Blake's  _ human _ friends are the ones who are standing here ready to fight and die for something, pal," she snarled back. "I don't know the ones she's apparently got waiting inside that school, but we're the ones still fighting, while it sounds like your  _ minions _ are back there surrendering. While I'm at it, like I said, I don't know about the rest of her human friends..." She let her snarl turn into a wolfish smirk. "But I bet we've all got bigger balls than you do too."

From beside her, Sun chokled.

Adam's face contorted, actually seeming shocked and offended by the schoolyard insult, as if no one had ever actually talked to him like that before. "You filthy little-"

"Hey, whatever you're about to say, I might just take offense to it," a new voice added as its owner strolled out of the shadows, Grey prowling around opposite of Kai, the claws of his weapon a little bloodied from laying into whatever remnants of the White Fang he'd likely found lurking in ambush points. "I mean, I know that's, like, chauvinistic or something, taking offense on a lady's behalf when she's perfectly capable of dissecting you herself, but..." The pretty man shrugged elaborately, smiling in a way that was both beautiful and slightly disturbing. "What can I say, I'm an old-fashioned guy."

"It's  _ over _ , Adam," Ilia said in an almost growl herself as she slipped into position between Kai and Blake, her long coat flapping a bit and ponytail flitting in the wake of one of the airships passing overhead. "The people who care about Blake, and about what the White Fang  _ really _ stands for, are here. And you're. All. Alone."

Adam's lips pulled back from his teeth as he turned his masked gaze back to Blake. But the hurt was gone, the nervousness was gone. There was just a woman standing tall, gazing at him coolly, not even bothering to show contempt on her face. "You can't hurt me by threatening my friends anymore, Adam. My friends can take care of themselves. And despite what you think, I didn't come here for you. I came for Haven, and I've got more important things to do. I'll walk away right now and let the rest of them take you apart... because I trust them. I believe in them." Her eyes narrowed. "And everybody that believed in you is losing faith every time they tug on their wrists and feel the handcuffs."

Kai could see the rage etched in every part of Adam's body, his very being. The desire to lash out at them, try to kill them all, even though he was surrounded, even though not a single pair of eyes in the circle save perhaps the pretty evening sky blue of Sun Wukong were offering him a hint of mercy. 

But she wasn't surprised when he gave a soft 'Tch' and ran, firing repeatedly at Grey and swiping at Sun in passing, Grey snapping his bracers up to block the shots and Sun ducking back, deflecting the cut with his staff. Both men turned, obviously intending to rush after him.

"No!" Blake called, frowning. "He just wants to lead us off, separate us so that he can pick us off one by one." She strode forward a little, shoulders squaring. "That's how he fights... he can only pick on someone when he's got them alone and outmatched. So let him know what it's like to run and be alone for a while."

"Good call," Sun said with a grin, twirling his weapon and tucking it in against his side. "We'll wrap things up here, Blake, you get inside with your team!"

Blake nodded, turning and rushing off, Sun hurrying back towards the lingering traces of the battle with Ilia in tow. Kai started to follow, then noticed that Grey was lingering. "Hey, s'up?"

"We're not seriously going to just let him go running off into the night to come back to haunt us, are we?" he replied with something like contempt.

Kai hesitated... but nodded. "That's what Blake wanted. She's the one calling the shots on this job, Grey.

"You say 'job', but she's not paying us," he pointed out, having pulled on the cool, uncaring mein of Grey Bloody Claws again, even including the little quirk of one side of his mouth in a smirk. "I mean I dunno if you're getting paid, but Niobe really only paid me to get you here, it was more of a personal favor to not just drop you in Menagerie and instantly beacon back to the Guildhall."

Kai stopped, turned fully towards him, frowning. "As I recall it was you that suddenly developed a heroic streak in Menagerie, when you saw that house burning."

Grey just looked at her, the Bloody Claws slowly wafting away like that Grimm dissolving after Sun had killed it, leaving him stoic and staring but... a little raw. "... Ghira's a good man," he said, his voice having gone quiet. "I went to him once, when I was still basically a kid. I'd been offered a job on the mainland and..." His lips twisted in something that was the mocking emulation of a smirk. "... I knew what it was. But I was in denial about it, because I wanted the hell off of Menagerie. The words 'private room' and 'clothing allowance' were calling me. He gave me a ton of good advice... ... but little, stupid me wasn't satisfied because what he didn't give me was money. So I ignored him. And I left. And I've regretted it pretty much every damn day since."

Kai lowered her eyes a little, recalling the rumors. Yeah. It wasn't hard to piece together what that 'job' on the mainland had been.

It was hard for her to imagine anyone being that desperate to get out of Kuo Kuana. It had seemed like a paradise... well, the parts that weren't on fire. Beautiful and warm and surrounded by ocean (which she was sure she'd get used to someday), the buildings were pretty, the people were interesting...

... but then she wasn't the one who had felt trapped there.

"I guess it's weird to feel like you owe someone when they didn't actually do anything for you, but goddammit he tried," Grey murmured, clenching his fingers, the claws shrieking ever-so-softly across the armor covering his palms. "And that bastard hurt his little girl. ... You go on back, Kai. I've got hunting to do."

* * *

"I just almost let him do it.

"I'd only known Blake about a day, but she seemed like someone special. She wasn't like anyone I'd ever met before. Quiet and thoughtful and even her hurt was gentle. A little afraid, a lot skittish, and incredibly strong. She was my friend. I wanted Adam to pay for whatever he'd done to her too.

"Grey had said earlier that the Belladonnas took care of all the kids who needed it. So it wasn't hard to guess how he felt about Blake, even if she clearly didn't remember him, in addition to what he felt he owed to Ghira. Grey Bloody Claws wasn't there right now, but Grey Heliotrope was, and Grey Heliotrope could still be scary all on his own.

"Because Adam had hurt his family.

"So yeah, I almost just said 'Good hunting' and let him go off to rip Adam's bones from his body in reverse alphabetical order.

"But something in me rebelled. Something that was coming to see all the similarities between myself and Grey. And how easy it would have been for either of us to use something in the early budding of our new life as an excuse to slip back into the old. How simple it would be to just kill our way through our problems like it was nothing.

"Grey had just found his soul again and barely taken hold of it in his hands. I couldn't let him throw it away."

* * *

"Grey," Kai said softly. "What do you think Ghira would say, if he knew what you were thinking about doing?"

"... I..." Grey opened his mouth. Closed it. The pain in his eyes as he looked away was answer enough.

"Right. You know, don't you? Listen... if you know what he'd say, and you're still hurting from the last time you didn't listen to him... maybe it's time you did." She crossed to him and rested a hand on his upper arm, squeezing gently. "His little girl isn't a little girl, and she can decide for herself how she wants things to be. But that doesn't mean you can't be there for her if she needs you. ... Maybe ask him if that's what he thinks you should do," she added, voice soft. "Maybe listen this time."

Grey was silent for long moments. When he spoke, his voice had the faintest tremble in it. "He's a good man. I just know that when he looks at me, he'll know what kind of man I've become, and... he'll be ashamed of me."

He said it like having traveled the multiverse and seen so many of the horrors it had to offer, that was still possibly the worst thing he could imagine.

"Grey." Kai waited until those steely eyes came up to look at her, and squeezed his arm again. "If he's that good of a man... he won't be."

* * *

"Still not entirely sure where those words about Ghira came from.

"Every so often when I was around Blake's dad, I'd have a feeling like we'd met somewhere before. Like I'd seen him in passing somewhere, and that it had left a deep impression on me.

"Somehow I just had a feeling about the sort of man he was. I couldn't say how, or why, just like... maybe there was a connection between us that I didn't have words for or know entirely why it was there."

* * *

The two started to make their way back, when there was a high, awful shrieking noise from inside the school, and a swirl of amorphous black that rose up from the floor.

"Blake!" Grey snapped, taking off at a run, his cry echoed a bit further off by Ilia. As the group grew closer the horrific image inside became clearer, showing corpse-white skin riddled with something like lesions or veins, a tattered robe made of shadows, twisted, gaunt limbs that didn't bend right. It let out the most awful howl and swept downward, and then it was suddenly gone.

"What," Ilia gasped.

"The," Grey grunted.

"Fuck," Kai snarled.

The three of them and Sun stared in through the gaping ruin of the front of the school, watching as Blake and three other people shared what was probably the only non-awkward group hug Kai had ever seen in her life.

"... They're fine," Sun said, smiling far more gently than Kai had seen him do so far. "C'mon. There's more to do."

And there was.

White Fang were still scattered across the city, but more than that, the conflict had apparently summoned Grimm. Kai didn't freeze this time, but she quickly found out for herself what Sun had been talking about. She could handle herself in melee well enough, but the Grimm were fast and durable, and she quickly found herself tiring without the ability to finish things up with a less tiring trigger-pull, almost always too pressed to easily draw one of her pistols.

Fuck it, she was going to have to also-a-gun her sword.

'Sorry, Ico, needs must,' she thought tiredly as she and Grey made their way back towards the sort of base camp that had been set up in the courtyard outside the school.

Then Grey froze beside her, Kai drawing to a halt and glancing around. Quickly enough she spotted Ghira Belladonna standing near one of the little makeshift areas that seemed to be set up as a communications and coordination center, talking to a couple of Mistralian lawenoff. Both of them walked off after a moment, and Ghira let his shoulders slump, pinching the bridge of his nose, suddenly looking tired and very alone.

"Grey," Kai prompted softly.

He stared at her as if honestly terrified, but after swallowing he turned and made his way forward. "Ah... sir? You probably don't remember me, but... I'm from Menagerie. Just got back before all this went down, and-"

"Grey?" Ghira's head lifted, his whole face lighting up as he reached out to clap his hands on the younger man's shoulders. "Grey! You're back! You were  _ here _ , fighting with us!" he enthused, what could only be pride shining in his eyes.

Grey had gone stiff as a board at the recognition, standing there with back straight and muscles tensed. He stared up at the big man, wide-eyed, saying nothing, Ghira's delight slowly starting to be replaced by concern. "... Sir..." Grey's voice was definitely trembling now. "... I wish I'd listened to you... I wish I'd listened to you back then... everything you said was right, but I..."

"Oh. Oh Grey. Oh son." Ghira's face crumpled, gentle misery and sympathy tinting his golden gaze. "I'm so sorry."

"... I got out but... I wound up... I did... I... I did so many bad things," Grey whispered, his voice cracking as tears started to run down his face. Slowly, the most bitter, cruel, vicious merc Kai personally knew crumbled away, leaving a sobbing little boy wearing his body. "Please... please don't hate me..."

"It's alright now, son," Ghira rumbled gently, enfolding the younger man in his arms and drawing him into an embrace, one big hand covering the back of his head. "It's alright. It's alright. None of that matters. You're home now, and it's all going to be okay," he said softly, deep voice as certain and strong as the stars.

Kai stared at them, an emotion she had no real words for tightening her throat and stinging her eyes. Finding she almost couldn't breathe, she ducked her head and turned, leaving Grey to cry in Ghira's arms.

She just wandered for a bit, trying not to feel jealous, not to feel lonely, to not feel something she didn't even know she was capable of... homesickness. Until she was jolted out of it by a familiar voice calling her name.

Kai quickly wiped a thumb under her eyes and turned. "Hey, Blake, s'up?"

"Would you mind coming with me?" The golden-eyed woman smiled. "There are some people I'd really like you to meet."

"Sure," Kai answered with a shrug, falling into step with her friend as they headed towards the porch of one of the nearby houses. They went up the small set of steps, Blake turning halfway towards the three other people gathered. "Kai, this Ruby Rose, Weiss Schnee, and Yang Xiao Long, my-" she hesitated almost imperceptibly, her smile turning a little fragile as she finished, "My partner. Everyone, this is Kai, she helped a lot with getting us here."

"Eeeee it's the space alieeeeen!" the silver-eyed girl with dual-toned hair squealed excitedly, her voice a delighted squeak as she pressed her fists under her chin. She almost jumped forward as if to hug the redhead, only for the big blonde beside her to reach out with her prosthetic right arm and snag her by the red hood she was wearing, rolling pretty purple eyes.

"I... guess?" Kai replied, eyeing Ruby dubiously. "Nice to meet you. And I really only helped out a bit on Menagerie, for the most part."

"It sounded to me like you helped out more than a little, Blake said she thinks that she might have lost her parents if you hadn't turned up," Weiss spoke up, raising one slender white eyebrow. 

'That is the  _ whitest _ girl I have ever seen,' Kai thought, grinning a little at the short blue-eyed woman. The redhead was on the pale side herself, due to a nocturnal lifestyle and a semi-fair natural complexion, but Weiss looked like the melanin fairy had just kind of waved from the window rather than come in.

"Look, it's no big," Kai assured the quartet, shrugging a little. "I came along in time to help. I'm still here to help. If there's something I can pitch in with, I'm in on it, no worries. Ilia too, and pretty sure Grey will want to come along." 

Blake exchanged a slightly worried glance with the others, then slowly nodded. "We... might actually have something we could use your help with. I mean... if it was 'our' Ilia, I'd be uncertain she could handle it, and she's only just now adjusting to confronting her old life. 'Your' Ilia seems... well, she seems like she could handle this. And as... well... Grey definitely seems like he'd be useful in a fight. Can you vouch for him?"

"Tell you what, when you get a chance, ask your dad if he'd vouch for Grey," Kai answered, grinning some. "He'll probably have a more weighted answer."

Blake blinked... then nodded. "Well... still." She turned a little, and looked at Ruby, as did Yang and Weiss. Kai suddenly realized that the only one of the four that she would have almost unhesitatingly classified as a 'girl' was actually the leader.

'Huh. Would've assumed Blake.'

Ruby blinked, realizing all eyes were on her... and her face changed a bit, growing serious, thoughtful, brows lowering as she considered. Her silver eyes reflected a more intense light, and suddenly Kai found them far more striking and vaguely familiar.

"It's really dangerous," Ruby murmured. "The more people we bring into this, the more in danger they are... us too. ... But it seems like what Salem wants is to divide us, keep us from coming together. If we start turning down honestly offered help, that's just playing her game." Slowly, her gaze lifted to Kai. "Just so you know, though... it wouldn't be a fight like this one. It's kind of... fate of the world type stuff."

Kai looked back at her, staring.

Then she let out a bark of laughter, clearly shocking the others.

"Actually, legitimately saving the world!" she hooted, shaking her head, grinning. "Fuck it, I'm in."

"Language!" Yang blurted in apparent reflex... then blinked as the others glanced at her. "What?"

"We need to make sure Haven is secure and that everything is stable enough for us to travel, so it'll probably be a few weeks," Ruby continued. "And, um, you'll have to talk to the person who's sort of in charge of the whole thing. Probably tomorrow night. You should rest up tomorrow, though, you look beat."

"Honestly kind of am," Kai admitted, bobbing her head. "I guess I also need to find someone to 'also a gun' this," she added with a little sigh, angling her katana outward a little.

"Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaa for reeeeeeal?!" Ruby squealed, zipping through the short space separating them with a blur and a puff of... rose petals?! "Can I see can I help can I do it all myself please please please?!"

"You have other things you need to be doing," Weiss commented flatly, reaching out and giving Ruby's ear a little flick from behind. "Dolt."

"A-awwww!"

"I'll see if I can find someone around here to help you with that," Blake spoke up, smiling. "I'd almost say to wait until Sun's friend Neptune got here, but we don't know when that will be, and frankly the sooner you can modify your weapon the better."

"Awww, but Neptune's really good! He's got this awesome electro-trident that turns into a railgun, I totally wanna turn Crescent Rose into a railgun too! Neeeeyow PSH!" Ruby declared, miming firing a weapon repeatedly and then adding explosion hand motions while going 'pffffwoooo!' with her mouth.

Kai stared at her for a moment, then lifted her gaze to the others. Yang shrugged, both with her shoulders and lips. "Sixteen."

"Wow, seriously?"

"H-hey!"

"Anyway, you should probably get some sleep," Yang commented, nudging Ruby towards the door ahead of her. "I know I'm gonna."

"It was nice to meet you," Weiss said politely, giving Kai a smile that made a weird little thing happen in her chest, before turning and following after the other two.

"So that's your partner, huh?" Kai asked after a moment, looking after the trio.

"Yes. ... Maybe." Blake sighed, bobbing her head. "We... have some things to work out."

"Well, marriage is rough. So I hear, anyway. From people who aren't home a lot, which probably explains it."

Blake blinked. "I'm sorry?"

"Do you guys not really wear rings or anything here, or...?"

The feline Faunus stared at the redhead for long seconds in complete confusion. Then her face went red.

"No, no,  _ Huntress _ partners! She's my... the team, it's separated into partners, me and Yang, Ruby and Weiss! We're... we... we're not..." She trailed off, her voice losing steam and her chin losing altitude, Blake's ears slumping as well.

'Well that was a fucking landmine to step on,' Kai thought with a small wince. "Hey, uh, sorry. Misunderstanding."

"... It's okay. I mean... it does happen, you know? Quite a lot." Blake gave Kai a wan smile. "But just being partners doesn't mean you're lovers. It means... you rely on that person. You lean on them. You..." Her voice faded to a whisper as she looked down. "You don't run out on them."

Kai slowly raised a hand, rubbing one of Blake's upper arms. "... Hey. Push through. It'll be okay."

"I hope so." Blake gave her a wan smile, and nodded. "Anyway, Yang's right, get some sleep. After that long march, the fight, and everything else, we're all running on fumes."

Kai definitely felt she was running on fumes as she made her way back to the central base. One of the Faunus militia gestured her to a house that was being used as a makeshift bunkhouse, and inside Kai carefully stepped over sleeping forms, making her way towards a particular one that was curled up, wrapped snug in her operator coat as if it were a favorite comfort blanket.

Settling down onto the empty bit of floor next to Ilia, Kai looked at her... then smiled, reaching out to gently stroke a hand over auburn hair. "Partners, huh?" she whispered. Then she leaned down and kissed Ilia's ear gently. "Night, partner."


	23. Chapter 17

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Kai is almost trampled by an out of control smol.

December 18, 244 AGW, 3:10 PM (Remnant 4482)

"Mmf."

Kai sat up, wincing. It had actually been a little while since she just straight-up slept on the floor or ground, and she found her back was actually complaining a little. 'Fuckin' sucks getting old,' the twenty-something thought.

She'd never expected it to be a problem if she was honest.

Kai found that sometime in her sleep, someone had actually managed to tuck a chocolate bar and a meal bar into the folds of her coat for her to find when she woke up. Someone with cute specks, probably. She tucked the mealbar away for later and instead indulged in one of her bag meals she'd bought on the Guildhall, scarfing down something that was almost like a chicken stew that a sentient creature would make with tools in a kitchen, if you were still half-asleep and had learned not to pay too much attention to your tongue in certain situations.

As she was much more enjoyably having the chocolate bar for dessert, a cute woman with rabbit ears poked her head in. "Are you Kai?"

"That's me, s'up?"

The woman's ears twitched a little at the apparently unfamiliar response, but replied, "Blake Belladonna asked me to tell you that one of the Haven students came back and has been helping with a bunch of the technical repairs, and that if she's that good with engineering she can probably help you with your weapon."

"Great." Kai rose to her feet, crumpling up the wrapper and tossing it into a not-quite-overflowing garbage can nearby. "Anything more to go on?"

"Sorry, no, just that it's a 'her'."

"Ah well, thanks."

'A "her", huh? Well, I've found people on less,' Kai thought as she wandered around. Well, at least searching the Haven grounds was a bit better than flinging right into Grimm duty. Sure she wanted to help, but she was also still processing a whole hell of a lot.

Like the fact that apparently she was someone who got involved with literally saving the world now.

'What in the actual fuck,' she thought, chuckling a little to herself and shaking her head... then blinking and turning at a low hum and a steadily growing "whhoooooOOOOOOAAAAA!" approached from behind.


	24. Interlude 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Reese Chloris details her no good, very bad year.

Nothing had quite gone right for Reese Chloris ever since Blake Belladonna kicked her ass at the Vytal Tournament.

Not that she considered these things linked, as if it had been some sort of omen. She hadn't even really been that upset about it and had, if she was totally honest, rather enjoyed the experience. It sucked losing, but man was it a privilege to catch a beating from a woman that hot.

Reese still had a number of varied and detailed private time fantasies related to that event. Among them was one that after defeating her, Blake forced a collar and leash on her, stripped her naked, and commanded her to perform various lewd acts for the viewing pleasure of the audience and all of Remnant.

That was a pretty good one, she came back to that one a lot.

So if anything that had been the last thing that had gone, if not right, at least enjoyably. Everything else after had just pretty much sucked, though.

First off there was that whole thing where it looked like Blake's partner had just straight-up attacked the guy she'd had her one-on-one with. Reese had always thought there was something off about that whole thing... when people started saying that Mercury was actually in on the later events, she'd found that entirely believable and switched her sympathies entirely to Yang.

Okay it was mostly because Blake was hot and Yang was hot and both of them had been pretty nice to her after the match and she had mostly just sided with them automatically but hey, she was still right!

And then everything, absolutely everything went to hell.

The match between Pyrrha Nikos and Penny Polendina had been horrifying. Reese had never known that there was such a thing as an android with an Aura... a soul. Seeing what had to be the only one in the world cut down in front of her had shocked and offended her in a way she didn't know she could feel until that moment.

Something that beautiful, that wonderful, that precious and new cut down in front of her. It had broken her heart.

Pyrrha obviously wasn't really at fault, considering that they now knew Yang had been framed too. Still, it had been a little hard not to let old resentments bubble up. The memories of that tall, pretty redhead striding through the Sanctum halls, everyone staring at her like she could pluck pieces of the moon out of the sky. Pyrrha hadn't ever committed any sin against Reese other than probably not even knowing she existed, but sometimes for someone like Reese that was the deepest cut of all.

Reese still would have died in her place in a moment if she could have. That was what Arslan had taught her being a Huntress meant. That was what she believed.

But Reese had been fighting a battle of her own. Plunged into the middle of a war where what she loved second best in all of the world, technology, was trying to kill her. Drones, Grimm, all around, people screaming, people bleeding.

The day before she had urged May Zedong into a little private alcove amidst the Beacon pillars, leaned in, kissed her. Not a big deal, just because the other girl was cute and it seemed like it would have been fun. May had gone very red, but had closed her eyes and kissed back, and it was soft and it was sweet and it  _ was _ fun. After it broke, May admitted sheepishly that it had been her first kiss.

Reese had grinned and kissed her again.

They'd had a date for the next night. Instead Reese watched her die along with most of her team.

That was a pretty rough one, had to admit.

But she was a Huntress. In training, at least. That was what it meant. Your friends, your comrades died sometimes. She survived the Battle of Beacon with her team, and came back to her school, and then things went weird, and now her school was shattered. And shuttered, for the rest of the semester. Of course, even before it had been, it had been starting to become obvious the school wasn't really functioning anymore, hadn't been for awhile.

Arslan wanted to transfer to Shade.

Reese despised the very thought of Vacuo. It wasn't the wildlife that made Grimm look a bit tame in comparison, it wasn't the heat, or the fact that Vacuo was notoriously unwelcoming (if not hostile) to outsiders, and it wasn't even the vague metaphysical feeling of dread that someone was waiting in Vacuo to rain slander and libel upon her character. It was two things.

The first was the sand.

Vacuo sand was literally the reason that no scroll manufacturer could list "sandproof" on its advertising. It got into everything. It got through everything. It destroyed virtually any piece of electronics and the more complicated your weapon the more daily maintenance it needed to keep from breaking down.

Reese's hoverboard, Lioncub, turned from a hoverboard into a pair of completely separated revolvers. 

It was a little complicated.

The other was that Vacuo felt on the opposite end of the world from everything relevant. Reese knew it wasn't fair, but she shared the view of most people on Remnant that Vacuo just didn't have much to offer. She was sure the culture was interesting and diverse and valid but she had her own interesting valid culture aw-haw yessuh she a Baoula gull yessuh she knowa swomp notta dessut Bawz.

She'd arrived at Sanctum not knowing a damn thing about what it meant to be a Huntress. She had her grandfather's stories of his days as a Huntsman, but most of those had fascinated her with the daring action and thrilling danger. He was half the reason she'd gone, the other half being just to get away from her parents, which had probably been a relief for all three of them.

They'd tried seven times before her hoping to get a girl. Eighth time, bam, and then she'd proceeded to disappoint them on their expectations at every turn. She wanted to ride dirt bikes with her brothers, catch frogs at the swamp edge, shoot small Nevermores with a little crossbow her grandfather had given her.

They'd compromised eventually. If she wanted a new skateboard, she had to take the ballet lessons. A certificate of excellence in flower arranging earned her freedom from having to wear a dress for five whole months. And when she did dress up  _ properly _ as her parents called it for family events and photos, they left her alone for a whole day after to run around trying to get herself killed playing daredevil however her little heart desired. They'd over and over enticed her with the girly activities, hoping any of them might work as a catalyst and finally turn her into a little Baoula princess, and Reese had conquered each one of them just to prove she could before discarding them without a second thought.

Eventually it had all just been so tiring, so leaving for boarding school, even if it was combat school, was probably a relief for all involved.

But it was at Sanctum she met Arslan. The fiery lion Faunus had somehow sensed that Reese needed someone, and had decided to be that someone. She took Reese under her wing, not only helped her keep up with the combat training despite her perpetually underdeveloped body, but had taught her the morals and values of being a Huntress. To stick up for the weak, to protect the helpless.

To stand between the innocent and evil.

Like everything that truly sparked her passions, Reese had gone at being the best Huntress she could be with everything she had. She had few settings other than Zero and Overload, a fact reflected in her Semblance. 

Reese wanted to do important things. She wanted to help the world. She wanted to hold up a torch to the dark that seemed to be encroaching on their world and say 'Not today.'

She wanted it especially every time she remembered May lying dead on the Beacon pavement.

And as much as she loved Arslan with all her heart and soul, her Momma Lion who called her "Cub" and always looked at her with pride, as much as she loved Bolin and Nadir as if they were two more brothers she hadn't particularly needed but was still glad to have, she didn't think going to Vacuo was where she was going to make an important difference.

So when she'd heard about the Battle of Haven, she'd come rushing back... she'd been staying in a super cheap hotel in Mistral anyway after being kicked out of the dorms, just avoiding going home for as long as possible. Of course she'd missed the actual battle, and now found herself being tasked with repairing every bit of boring, mundane, straight to market piece of equipment that needed it.

Work that needed doing, sure, but it didn't  _ feel _ important.

So she'd decided to take a ride on Lioncub to clear her head a little and help her focus. She'd loaded it up with some freshly-bought Dust... and quickly discovered that it was apparently cut wrong, probably mixed with some various other kind-of-color-matched varieties or maybe even just some ground glass to round out the level. 

The Atlas embargo was, apparently, going to kill her, she thought as Lioncub accelerated out of her control and sent her hurtling right towards someone in a really boss jacket.

She had no idea that she was actually on a collision course with that important task she'd been looking for.


	25. Chapter 18

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Kai's sword is also-a-gunned and Reese almost makes everyone explode.

"Reese Chloris straight-up became one of my favorite people.

"Put whatever label on that you want. Teammate, sister, whatever you wanna call it. Just one of my favorite people.

"In a lot of ways she was already what I wanted to be when I met her. She was a little lost and a little in need, sure, but she was someone who had gone her own way and still wound up at a destination called Huntress.

"I think the more I got to know Reese, the more I realized that if someone like her could have the heart and soul of a Huntress, to strive to be a hero, to really, sincerely, and completely without a hint of irony say that they were there to stand between the innocent and evil, then someone like me could too.

"Reese would wind up sacrificing a lot along the way. I never once saw her resent or regret it though.

"For her, that was just what a Huntress did."

* * *

December 18, 244 AGW, 4:32 PM (Remnant 4482)

Kai quickly jumped to the side, watching with wide red eyes as what looked a lot like a young girl in a purple hoodie zipped by at high speed on a hoverboard and straight at a wall.

Before Kai could do anything the boarder managed to twist, instead of crashing briefly going vertical and zipping upward along the wall... until gravity caught up with her, and she was dragged back to the ground, yelping loudly as her spandex-clad rear thumped against it. Then yelping much louder as the board continued its arc, dropped, and clonked her squarely on the head before settling into a shuddery hover.

"Guuuuuh," the green-haired, green-eyed punk said, wobbling in a little circle as Kai cautiously drew closer. She blinked a few times, glanced at the board, and scowled at it. "Traitor." Then she just as quickly snatched it up and hugged it. "I'm sorry baby I didn't mean it at all it's not your fault it's the shitty Dust they're selling in SDC stores fuck the Schnees."

"Hey!" came an aggravated cry from far in the distance.

Kai blinked a few times. "Uh, hey. Would you happen to be the... engineer?"

"That's me!" the girl chirped, hopping to her feet, all bright smiles and hands on hips as if having forgotten her abused butt in an instant. "At your service probably literally I guess since every-fuckin'-body wants a piece of me shit sucks when you're talented! ... What?" she added, pursing her lips at the redhead.

Probably because Kai's face had broken out in a huge grin of utter delight. "You  _ swear _ ."

"Hell fuckin' yeah I swear-n-shit!" the green-haired girl declared proudly, puffing out what little there was of her chest. "I swear like a god damn bastard! ... Actually my partner made me promise not to talk at all when we were at Vytal I swear so fuckin' much," she added rather sheepishly, reaching a hand inside her hood to rub the side of her neck.

'She a little tryhard, but she got the spirit,' Kai thought, still grinning so much her cheeks hurt a little.

She'd found one.

Remnant had a night creature.

Okay so she was out in the day and she looked like she might be like twelve but it was a little bit of familiar in a world that was still pretty alien. "I did wanna ask for your help, actually," she admitted. "But not with fixing something, well not really. I'm Kai," she said, proffering a hand.

"Reese Chloris," the girl answered, seizing the hand and shaking energetically. "So what's up what's the deal whatcha need hey what color is 'Kai' anyway?"

Kai blinked slowly, raised a hand to glance at the bit of skin between her sleeve and her fingerless glove. "Kind of a light beige or something?" 

Reese quirked an eyebrow and scoffed. "What're you like from outer space or something?"

"I guess kind of technically," Kai agreed, rolling her eyes a bit... then grinning again as Reese gave her a 'what' look. "Seriously, I'm not from Remnant."

"Uh-huh pull the other one it's also skinny and looks good in baggy socks."

Kai chuckled. "I'm not fucking with you. But anyway I was kind of hoping you could help me out. Like I said, I'm not from here, and we don't really do the 'it's-also-a-gun' thing where I come from. But after fighting Grimm I'm seeing I probably need to. This is my go-to," she added, slipping her sheathed katana out and proffering it.

Reese quirked an eyebrow again at the apparent antique, but accepted it with even more reverence than Blake had, actually bowing her head briefly over it before unsheathing the blade. Without ever actually touching it she looked it up and down, eventually drawing a pair of goggles out of her hoodie pocket and slipping them on, the lenses dotted with what looked like small scanners.

"Okay yup nevermind I totally believe you dude," she announced after about a minute of examining the sword with the goggles.

"Huh. Just like that?"

"Yup just like that this isn't made on Remnant they don't make 'em like this anymore fuck they never made 'em like this the alloy process is completely different and the folding technique's never been recorded you are twenty hundred percent a space alien."

"I kind of wish people would quit with the 'space alien' thing," Kai muttered, rolling her eyes again. "It makes me feel weird."

"Sorry if I was insensitive my extraterrestrial compadre you are my very first friend from beyond the stars and I don't wanna start out with a microaggression so let's focus on getting you properly geared up for your impending planetary conquest," Reese chirped cheerfully.

'... Oh nevermind.'

* * *

"See my problem was I said 'weird'.

"Had I said 'bad', 'uncomfortable', almost anything else that indicated I sincerely didn't like it, Reese would have just never said a word about it again.

"'Weird' didn't parse as bad to her. She was weird. She wasn't like reveling in it or anything, trying to be deliberately, she just was and knew she was. She'd stopped treating 'weird' like a bad thing when she learned to love herself.

"I  _ still _ think everyone made too big a deal over me getting huffy about being called a space alien. It was annoying, sure, but it kind of became a Thing later and meh. Oh well, we'll get there."

* * *

"So, think you can do something with it? I'd like to not, y'know... mess with it too much, and maybe keep any parts you take off," Kai murmured, shifting a little uncomfortably at having to reveal so much sentimentality.

Reese's own face lit up with her grin. "No troubles bubbles hey don't get bothered by it we're pretty damn sentimental about our weapons here on Remnant we give 'em meaningful names and they're like our other partners so we kind of love 'em the same y'get what I'm saying? I will do my best to treat your baby with respect and we will take it from just a beautiful work of art to a beautiful work of Grimmslaying art you get me?" 

Reese regarded the katana for a few moments more, giving a soft 'hm', before resheathing it. "Probably what I'll have to do is just use the blade. If we wanna add a projectile function I'll have to build it into the handle and this one's obviously been crafted with love I'd rather not tear it up. I probably oughtta give the blade a Dust coating too it'll make it way more durable and channel your Aura better and generally kill shit more reliably that way. That okay with you?"

"That works," Kai said after a brief hesitation, nodding.

"Alright my hot scarlet amazon this way then follow me back to the Auburn Lair."

Kai glanced aside at a sign as they walked past. "Huh, so you're a third year?"

"Ayup and before y'ask no I'm not a special jumpahead I'm just smol always will be best get used to it," Reese replied breezily, pushing open the door to one room. "Here we are home sweet home at least for the time being."

Following Reese in, Kai stopped and took it in. The room was divided, quite obviously, into four quarters, with a bed in each quarter. Three of them were made up to various levels of 'immaculate', neat and tidy with crisp corners. One was decorated with wall scrolls showing various chakra point diagrams and what looked like maybe poems or affirmations that her translator nanos fed her the literal meaning of but couldn't give her context for. The other two were about standard for teenage boys who were trying not to be cringey or make anyone yell at them. The fourth was... clutter.

The floor was completely covered in it. The desk was completely covered in it. The chair. And yet not a single bit of it edged out over into the invisible dividing line between that fourth of the room and the other three. Reese calmly walked through, making a path with nudges of her feet, somehow shifting everything precisely so that the border was maintained, quickly and efficiently clearing the desk and chair and setting down the katana before coming back. "So y'got anything else to work with?"

"What, like these?" Kai asked, spreading her coat to show off the multiple handguns, knives, and throwing stars she carried as a matter of course.

"I love you please destroy my pussy with your ovipositor and cram me full of healthy hybrid alien young."

Kai raised both eyebrows. And grinned. "Let's see how you do on the weapon first."

"Ow. ... Ow. ... Ow."

Kai laid on one of the beds, having rummaged enough to turn up a girlie mag... not a particularly titillating one, just a swimsuit edition type thing, but the girls were a lot more unique-looking than in most porn mags she'd seen at least. Remnant did have diverse and colorful style, give it that. 

"Ow. ... Ow. ... Ow."

"Wear gloves or something," the redhead suggested, eyeing the current page. Damn, she'd look good in that one.

"It's delicate work gloves might throw me off besides makes me feel alive."

Kai scoffed. "M."

"I know what that means y'know and fuck you for being perceptive," Reese replied without taking her goggled eyes off her work, little flashes showing as she apparently did spot welds with what looked a lot like a laser pointer. In the end of Kai's weapons she'd only selected the magaccel pistol, and a couple of the other ones for parts, leaving Kai with the quickfires still in their holster.

Kai grinned again, sitting up some. "Hey, you hungry?"

"Always my crimson temptress always."

Kai closed her eyes.  _ Ilia? _

_ Kai! _ Ilia chirped back immediately.  _ Where'd you get off to? _

_ Having my weapon worked on. _

_ Oh right yeah that makes sense. Oh hey Blake told me that they want to meet up around 9:30 tonight. _

_ 'Kay. Hey, do me a favor? _

_ Sure! _

_ Poke around, find what's cooking, and bring a couple of plates or bowls or whatevers of it to room 313 in the Haven dorms. Yourself something too, if y'want, I'll introduce you to my new friend. _

Ilia and Reese either hated each other or loved each other, alternately bickering and gushing and flowing between the two like water as Reese continued her work. Kai just sat back and grinned, listening to them, occasionally interjecting, sometimes laughing.

It quickly became clear that Reese had a bit of a crush on Blake, same as Ilia, and they both bickered and gushed over that too. 'Does Blake have a thing for smols or do smols have a thing for Blake?' Kai mused, mostly just enjoying being there.

It was nice.

It was comfy.

She didn't mean the bed. Though damn if that wasn't comfy too.

"Okay now almost done all I gotta do is apply the Dust coating," Reese declared, Kai setting aside the book of Arslan's poetry she was trying without success to read and getting up to head through the path to stand nearby, Ilia scrunching in next to her. "Let's see let's see let's see oh yes I have been waiting for a very special occasion for this and this beauty of a blade is just the occasion aw-huh yessah," she announced, holding up a vial of red-orange fine granules.

"What kind of Dust is that?" Ilia asked, nose wrinkling a little.

"My very own precise blend of Fire Dust and Lightning Dust I call it 'Firestorm Dust' and it's baller my good specks,' Reese replied with a grin, glancing at Kai before starting to carefully sprinkle the stuff over the blade. "This will bond with your Aura that you've channeled through it and it'll just join right up with the metal."

"I dunno that I've actually channeled any Aura through it," Kai noted a bit dubiously.

"Have you fought with it since you were Awakened?" At Kai's nod, Reese grinned. "Then yeah you've put Aura through it at least enough for this you'd've done it subconsciously and okay there we go we're all ready!" she added cheerfully, picking up a pair of clamps with attached wires and clicking them a few times. "Okay here's the bit where it looks super awesome and goes flawlessly or we all explode three two one go!"

"WHAT?!" Ilia and Kai both yelped, flinching away as the clips came down on the edge.

The blade burst into flames and audibly crackling electricity, both sending out a wave of heat that was enough to ruffle hair and clothes, before both were actually sucked directly into the metal, leaving it a gleaming, warm red color with just the faintest dappling of lighter colors running through it.

"Tada~! Oof hey stoppit stop quiddit!" Reese yelped as Ilia started smacking her around the head and shoulders.

"Don't! You! Make! Me! Explode! I've! Already! Exploded! Once!"

"Hey hey hey quit it c'mon!" Once Reese had batted away Ilia's hands, she grinned and stood, picking up the weapon, hitting a hidden control on the grip. Chrome-colored panels slid up from the guard, forming into a sheath over the blade. Reese turned it sideways and presented it to Kai. "Your weapon my queen."

Kai blinked slowly, picking it up. The grip was definitely more like an elongated pistol grip, a bit more angular and molded to her hand. Sliding her fingers along it, she could very faintly feel the place a trigger had recessed into it... probably only because she was looking for it. When she found and pressed the same control Reese had, the sheath retracted again, sliding into place over the guard instead, turning it heftier, better for blocking heavy blows or maybe smashing something or someone in the face with.

She found the control below that and tapped it. The sword blade reversed direction and then swung downward, pointing towards the floor as a round barrel bearing the blue magnetic acceleration rings slid outward and into place above it, turning the weapon into a combination pistol-ulak. 

"Damn," Kai whispered, grinning again.

That was some cool shit.

"Fuckin' amazing work, Reese," Kai declared, turning it back and forth. "What's it use for ammo?"

"I whipped up a variable chamber for it so it can still use the bullets you had for the original pistol but it's mostly designed to take these," Reese explained, holding up a cylindrical magazine and turning it to show silver spheres inside. "Solid metal easy to cast with damn near anything you've got at hand if you need reloads and have the mold which obviously I have here for you but also it can take these," she added, picking up a magazine and tilting it to show the snowflake symbol on the bottom. "Dust encased in a metal sphere designed to shatter on impact and boomf there y'go got you a mold for those too all you gotta do is pour in the dust and use a little sealant to fill the hole."

"Okay I am definitely destroying your pussy the first time I have something to destroy it with," Kai declared with a smirk, Reese returning it while Ilia made slightly choked noises. Kai switched the weapon back to sword mode and looked it over. 

"So whatcha gonna name it?" At Reese's prompting, Kai glanced over. "Remember what I said we're pretty damn sentimental and from the way you were looking at it before and after I kinda figured you'd wanna give it a name."

Kai hesitated. Raised the sword up, turned it. Looked at her reflection in it.

Or rather, caught the reflection of her red eyes in the tinted mirror of the blade.

* * *

"I've talked a lot about Niobe being my mom. Thinking back I probably made it sound like I always thought of her that way, always considered her my parent. And it's not really true.

"Realizing Niobe was my mom is something that happened when we met again as adults. And she definitely taught me a lot of great mom things.

"She taught me to be tough and take no shit I didn't absolutely have to take. She taught me how to get back up no matter how it hurt or how much it felt like I was dying. She taught me to brawl, made me strong. I learned to laugh from her, I learned to flirt, I learned to smile. All hers. She taught me how to live, basically, as much as she could with our situation.

"Ico gave me reasons to keep living.

"Whatever faint parts of an actual childhood I had were because of Ico. She was always the one who gave in and bought me a chocolate bar or soda from the vending machines. She was the one who held me when I got hurt bad enough that I cried, or just when I had to cry. She was the one who did her best to nurture my spirit, and when I found faith in the Crystal Dragon she was the one who supported me.

"I think the best thing she did for me was the aviary. There was this big dimensional pocket aviary accessible in the Guild, it was like being outside and walking along a long bridge over the top of a slowly changing forest, and you could step to each of these little circles that came out from it, and if you couldn't see the particular bird from that spot you could call up holowindows showing what it was doing right then. Ico took me there saying that she needed to show me the raptors... how they dove, how they banked, how they struck, so that I could apply it to my swordwork. And y'know, it was true, I actually learned from it.

"But funny enough... she always had to tie her boot or adjust her swordbelt or do something with her hair every time we walked past one of the sections I looked at very hard.

"Ico had red eyes.

"When I was still able to have hopes and dreams, some nights I would lay in bed and wish she would take me in her arms, and hold me close, and tell me I was really hers and always had been. That she was going to take me and Niobe and Zee off somewhere, where we could all be a family together.

"Thinking about it, I guess despite my shitty circumstances, I was still luckier in one way than a lot of people. I had two great parents who loved me."

* * *

"Red Legacy," Kai whispered.

Perhaps sensing that there was a deeper meaning there than most, Reese just bobbed her head and smiled. Ilia's smile was gentle, too, as she rested a hand on Kai's forearm. Then she glanced at the clock on the wall. "Oh, it's almost time."

"Yeah, it is. Hey, Reese, I dunno how to thank you for this," Kai said as she worked the sheathing control. Noticing what looked like a grav panel, she tucked it against her hip and grinned as it adhered. "Aw yeah that's good. How can I pay you back for this?"

The green-haired woman stared back at her for long moments. Then said, "Take me with you."

"Er." Kai blinked, exchanged a quick glance with Ilia. "To what?"

"Whatever it is you're doing that's important enough you were already here at the Battle of Haven and that has someone from another world involved and that means that person from another world needs an upgraded weapon and has you going to secret meetings after dark," Reese replied, just as rapidfire as ever but in a bit of a bland tone.

Kai and Ilia exchanged another glance.

Reese huffed a bit. "Look whatever you're doing it's obviously important and from talking to you guys you seem like if you're doing something important it's probably big-I Important so I want in."

"I thought you already had a team, though?" Ilia asked, glancing around the room.

Reese hesitated, then nodded once. "Yeah I'm not saying I'm ready to ditch Team ABRN forever but for right now it seems like you guys actually might need me. Arslan will understand that I've gotta make decisions that I think are the right ones and that I've gotta stand up for what I think is right. And for now I think that means going with you because hey you're gonna need someone to service and fix weapons right?"

"... You said the magic words," Kai said with a sigh.

"Service and fix weapons?" Reese repeated, grinning ruefully.

"Nah. 'Stand up for what I think is right'." Kai grinned and gave Reese a light shove on the head. "C'mon you skinny little bitch, we're going to a meeting."


	26. Chapter 19

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which a very old man makes a lot of people cry.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I always knew this segment was a bit of a cheat when I wrote it.
> 
> But I needed a way for the new team to bond with the others as solidly as they'd already bonded with each other, and the nature of what I was writing meant I didn't have seasons for that, I needed to keep things sort of clipping along at a brisk pace.
> 
> Besides, as I realized while writing it, and as the next interlude goes into, there was a perfectly valid in-character reason for it. So maybe it wasn't quite as much of a cheat after all.

December 18, 244 AGW, 9:15 PM (Remnant 4482)

"Oh right here."

As they walked out of the dorm building, Reese slipped a pair of white devices with yellow diamonds on their backs out of her pockets, holding them out to either side. "I noticed y'didn't have any so while I was taking a break from engineering I also did some engineering and fixed these up for you guys."

"Oh nice a scroll, I lost mine not long after I arrived on Makarzia," Ilia chirped, plucking the one she was offered out of Reese's hand. "Thanks Reese!"

"Huh, thanks," Kai added as she accepted the other, turning it over. It didn't look very different from her guild comm, which was designed to blend in with the 'smartphones' most planets developed during their information age. Well that and it was incredibly cheap compared to the really nice models.

"These are military models they fell out of the back pockets of Mistralian cops and into my hands how did it happen who can say I have no clue but anyway I've reinforced them so they shouldn't go out for damn near anything and you'll wanna learn how to use them to monitor your Aura and stuff Kai."

"It can do that? Now that's pretty cool," Kai admitted, grinning and tucking it away in a pocket.

After a bit of walking they spotted Blake waiting in the street, waving to them as they approached. "Oh, Reese, hi," Blake said with a blink. "I didn't know you were back."

"A-aw," Reese murmured, obviously having hoped Blake had been looking for her. Then she perked right up. "S'fine! So how're you? Still kicking ass and making it beautiful?"

Blake's cheeks colored a little, but before she could find an answer to that sort of comment, a figure melted out of the shadows. Her body went stiff briefly, on alert, relaxing only a little when she saw it was Grey.

But to Kai, this was an entirely different person that had emerged than the last time she had seen him. He seemed both tired and energized... there was a different set to his shoulders, his jaw rested more softly, eyes more relaxed, though there was a bit more pain visible in them now.

"Blake." Grey hesitated, before continuing. "What you're doing... I'd like to come along. With you. With them," he added, nodding to the trio. "... I have a debt to pay," he added more firmly.

Blake eyed him, then looked over at Kai... who just grinned.

"He's part of my team." She bobbed her head once. "They all are."

"... Alright. But you should still hear everything first before you agree," Blake told them, before turning and leading the way into the house.

There were people here Kai hadn't met, though she'd seen them briefly when looking in at the Haven lobby... a blonde man in light armor, a very pretty man with a flat face, and a short, somewhat stocky girl with orange hair. A guy who looked around forty, short somewhat spiky hair, and... red eyes, that was interesting. And a boy who looked fourteen if he was a day, though there was something much more mature and refined about his posture, about the steady look in his green-gold eyes.

"Miss Kai, isn't it? Welcome. Please come in," he said evenly.

"Mmmkay." Kai quirked a brow, tucking her hands in her pockets and moving to stand across the coffee table from him, Reese and Ilia moving to flank her, Grey lingering a bit further back.

"I have heard what few details of your past that Miss Belladonna knows and thought appropriate to share. I have been around for a... very long time," the extremely old-seeming boy continued. "But I have never encountered someone from another world."

"Just don't call me a 'space alien', please," she muttered.

The faintest flicker of a smile curled his youthful lips. "No, I should think not." Then his expression grew more serious as he added, "But before we continue, I must ask you a question. Why are you here?"

"Well." Kai blinked slowly. "Niobe asked me to help Ilia, and do some recruiting for her, so-"

"No, Miss Kai, I mean why are you _here_? Standing in this room with us volunteering for a mission whose details and purpose you do not know." He raised a hand from the cane he'd folded both of his atop. "Please understand, I ask not because I doubt your intentions or character. I wish merely to know what it is that motivates you. This is not your world. Why are you stepping forward to fight for it?"

Kai was silent for a few moments, turning that over. Why? Why _was_ she volunteering for this damn crazy mission she knew nothing about? Any of her teachers, any of her coworkers from either the Guild or the Slicers would be calling her crazy for volunteering for something so big but so vaguely-defined.

She glanced aside at Ilia.

She glanced aside at Reese.

She flicked her gaze over her shoulder at Grey.

Then her eyes came back to rest on the boy.

"The hell it's not my world."

"... Forgive me, Miss Kai, I thought we had just both agreed that you are _not_ in fact from Remnant?" he replied, brow furrowing slightly.

"I'm not. That doesn't mean it's not my world." Kai elevated her chin a little. "I have no idea where I was born... my story starts in a cell and runs through a hundred worlds and dwells on a shithole of a cityworld in the back reaches of a crappy dimension no one cares about. ... But because of that I guess I've realized there's only one thing I care about. ... People. The people who I have connections with. The people who seem like they need me. The people that understand me."

"... More than that," she continued, gaze still fixed on the now silent boy. "People in front of me who are hurting. Who are soulsick. And from what I'm seeing, Remnant is full of them. So you say this isn't my home? Fuck you. From now on my home is where these people are," she added, nodding her head to indicate the entire room. "This is my home because it's their home. So I'll fight for it. You tell me that whatever you're doing is going to help this world, sign me up. Because you couldn't drag me away with a bunch of those big ugly shadowy fucks all pulling a chain around my neck."

He remained quiet for some time, everyone seeming to turn Kai's words over in his head much as he did. But finally he raised a hand to his chin. "It seems... existence is so much bigger than I ever thought, or knew. Could things have... changed? If there are people who are not even of Remnant willing to fight for it... could I have been so wrong?"

"Oz?" the red-eyed man asked curiously, blinking and looking over.

'Oz' was silent for a long time again. But eventually he nodded. "... I have made my decision. Secrets will be revealed tonight. Things that have been too long unsaid. But not only mine."

He lifted his head, slowly looked around the room. "Each one of you is holding on to something that could destroy you. Destroy all of us." A faint uncomfortable ripple almost visibly went through everyone present at the announcement. "Things unsaid. A pain that festers inside, poisoning each of us and all of us. I have seen it in all of you... and I know it well. So. Since we have a number of new additions, I think introductions are in order. We will each of us tell who were are... but more, what we are hiding. What we are not saying to the others that we know, in our hearts, must be said."

"Oz, c'mon," Qrow scoffed, eyes narrowing.

"I am _entirely_ serious, Qrow. If I am going to share my secrets, we must all make this pact together. We must all be ready to be open with each other. That is my demand... my price. I will not be taken in by another Leonardo, who kept his inner heart locked away," he added, a bit of heat in his voice before he calmed himself. "... So. Instead. We talk."

'He can't be fucking serious,' Kai thought, scowling some at the strange boy. 'Who would ever-'

"I'm... Ruby Rose."

All eyes turned to the small woman with the silver eyes as she stepped forward, raising her hand briefly as if wanting to be called on in school, before flopping it lamely to her side.

"Um, I'm from Patch, and I always wanted to be a Huntress, because that's what my mom was. Except she died, and... sometimes I wonder if wanting to be a Huntress is just my way to keep some part of her. B-because... because I keep failing at it," she whispered, her squeak of a voice turning into a soft croak, two tears slipping down her cheeks. "I couldn't save two of my best friends... all I could do was watch them die. And as hard as I keep pushing on... I don't think I'll ever stop feeling like a failure for not being able to do anything for them."

"Oh Ruby," Yang whispered, tears sliding down her own cheeks as she moved to the smaller woman in her arms, the two embracing tightly, Yang murmuring a soft stream of words clearly meant only for the silver-eyed girl's ears. 

Eventually Yang shuddered a little, breathing hard for a few moments... then drawing away from the hug. "... My name's Yang Xiao Long. I'm Ruby's big sister... we have different moms, but... that doesn't matter. She's my sister, doesn't need any qualifiers, so just be clear about that. And about a year ago, I... did something stupid, charged into a fight I couldn't win. And I lost." 

She looked down, lifting her prosthetic hand and flexing it. "I lost a _lot_ . ... Except I didn't lose my partner." She slowly raised her head, looking at Blake... then hissed, as more tears escaped her eyes. "Because she _ran away_ and _left me_."

"Yang..." Blake whispered, pure pain etched in every line of her face.

"SHUT UP! You _ran_ when I needed you the most! I **_hate_ ** you!" Yang screamed, her agonized voice filling the room. 

Then just stared for a long moment in the silence that followed, tears falling silently, until she said hoarsely, "And I also love you more than I know what to do with. I love you so deeply that it goes down into a part of me I didn't know was there. I can't stop loving you, I will never stop loving you, loving you is a _part_ of me, even though you left me there bleeding on the tarmac. Do you know what it _feels_ like to love someone that did that to you?"

Ilia pressed her face to Kai's side, hiding her own tears. Too overwhelmed by too many things... the pain in Blake's eyes, the anguished declaration of love and resentment that must have been too similar to the one that had been locked in her own heart.

The golden-eyed woman stood, her head lowered, nothing to show that she was alive except the steady drip of tears down onto her jacket. When she spoke, her voice was quiet...

... but determined.

"I'm Blake Belladonna. I was born in Menagerie to the leaders of the White Fang. And... I've run from every problem I've ever had." Her fists clenched until her hands trembled. "When I disagreed with my parents on how to fight for equality, I ran from them instead of working it out. When I saw what the organization I'd run to was becoming, I ran from them too, instead of trying to make it better. I abandoned them... everyone," she added, lifting her head just enough to glance at Ilia. 

"... And then, in the worst possible moment after I thought I'd been making some sort of strides towards being a better person... I abandoned my friends, my team, and my partner. My best friend. ... Someone I love," she added in a croak, finally daring to look at Yang, tear-filled yellow eyes meeting wet purple ones. "Because I thought it would keep her safe. ... But also... ... because... I hated myself for what happened to her... and I couldn't deal with the idea that she might hate me too. And I ran, because it would have destroyed me. I ran... but I came back. And even if she hates me now... I'll have to live with it. Because I'm never running away again."

With a sob, Yang lurched forward and grabbed hold of Blake, pulling her forward tightly, hands clenching in the back of her coat as she clutched her tightly, as if afraid that even one moment more apart from her might end them both.

The air was thick with a sort of anticipatory terror... the idea of baring what you were holding back so completely. And yet... and yet...

"My name's Weiss Schnee. ... And for most of my life I made excuses for what my family did to Faunus... and to other people who were beholden to us." Weiss turned her gaze to Blake as the embrace ended, the feline Faunus sniffling. 

"And I won't apologize for caring about the people in my life that did those things... they were still people. They were still my friends... my family," she added, lifting her chin. Then she slumped a little. "... But I'm still ashamed of the way I used to look at the world. And I keep hoping I'm better... that I've found what's really important... but I catch myself missing the comforts I had. I catch myself feeling sad that I've lost the money and affluence... and I wonder if I'm going to always be that same stupid, shallow girl you all met that first day at Beacon."

"Weiss, no," Ruby whispered softly, crossing to the pale girl and taking her hands. "That's not who you are... I don't think that's ever who you were. Maybe that's... maybe that was something you learned to put over who you were, but I don't believe that's who you are. You're my partner... my friend. Our teammate. ... We love you."

Kai was still wondering how Team RWBY managed to make a group hug look like the least awkward thing in the world.

Silence dragged out briefly. But there was momentum now. People understood this was happening. That past the pain there was the faintest promise of salvation.

"My name's Jaune Arc." The blonde boy had shifted to sitting with his head in his hands. He sounded dry-eyed, but he was staring down at his own lap fixedly. "I forged test exams to get into Beacon Academy, because I... wanted to be a hero. And I failed to protect the person that tried to help make those dreams come true... twice. And she went off without me, and she died. And every single day... every single day, I wish she'd taken me with her, so that I could have tried to save her..." 

He shuddered hard, and his voice cracked as he said, "Or that I could have at least died with her."

"Jaune," the orange-haired girl gasped in a pained tone. 

The flat-faced boy stared at him for long moments, then rushed over, grabbing hold and hauling him up and against him, fingers twisting in shaggy blonde hair in a mixture of love and anger as he crushed the more muscular man against him, both shaking a little as Jaune started to sob.

"No. No. You will _never_ think that again, you will _never_ think that again," the black-haired man murmured, squeezing Jaune tighter. "You are here with us, and we need you. You are never to wish you'd left us again. Understood?"

"I'm sorry," Jaune sobbed softly. "I'm sorry."

Once Jaune had exhausted himself, he was allowed to sink back into the chair. The other man just stood there for a moment, then turned to face the rest of the room, his voice flat again. 

"My name is Lie Ren. I watched my parents die at the hands of a Grimm. I was not able to save them... because I was a child. I was only able to save one other person," he continued, as the orange-haired girl got up and moved to stand at his side, slipping her hand into his. 

"And I am... angry... all the time," he added, just a flicker of that rage passing across his pink eyes. "I have tried so hard to control it in all the years since, but there are times that I worry the anger is all I can feel anymore. Anger and... fear. Fear that everything will be taken from me again. Fear of what that would do to me. And the fear... makes me angry."

His partner was silent only briefly before starting up, her voice slightly hoarse as she gave an awkward little wave. "Um, hi, person he saved here, Nora Valkyrie. Um, at least, that's the name I gave myself, because... I... forgot whatever name I had before."

A flicker of pain crossed Kai's eyes. But she stayed silent.

"And I'm... a coward," Nora whispered, lowering her head. "I've been seeing the pain my friends are in, and... the pain I'm in. But whenever I've seen a chance to stand up and do something, I... didn't. I covered it over with acting like a silly goof, because I know that's what people expect of me. So that I wouldn't have to risk losing anyone else... risk the hurt of confronting them."

She lifted her head, expression crumpling completely as she looked at the blonde boy. "Jaune... I knew about what you were doing at night. I knew about the tapes. I knew I needed to say something, but... I didn't. I am _so_ sorry."

Silence again. And when it was broken, Kai's heart broke a little just at the sound of the voice speaking.

"Ilia Amitola. I was born in Mantle. My parents were happy that I was... passing. Because they thought they could get me out of the same life they had... and over time I got happy about it too. I... I started to feel racist against other Faunus, because I was going to school above them, the people around me hated them," Ilia said softly, Blake's eyes pinching, and Kai realized the other Faunus had heard this story before. 

"... And then there was a mine collapse. My friends laughed. And I broke down and showed my... my true colors... because I knew my parents were dead. And they all stared at me in shock, not saying anything, realizing I was a Faunus. And then all my despair turned to anger, and I attacked them. And after that I just stayed angry and kept attacking humans, because if I did that... if I did that, I didn't have to face the pain. I didn't have to face what I'd become." 

She brushed her hands quickly over her spotted cheeks, before huffing out, "I _wish_ ... I _wish_ I'd at least let them say something. I wish I'd given them the chance to show me who they were... because now that I've stopped being angry, now that I've faced the pain... I know I wish they'd have understood and tried to make up for how much they'd hurt me. ... But I don't think I can ever make up for how I hurt them."

"Ssshhh. Hey. Hey, Rainbow, it's okay," Kai said softly, drawing her partner in against her, hugging her close, a hand on her head, head lowered over hers. "You've already faced this. This can't hurt you anymore."

"... Grey Heliotrope," the man in the back said, his voice cool, but quiet. "Born on Menagerie. Orphan. Everyone took care of me there. Especially the chief and his wife." 

At Blake's surprise, he gave her a lopsided smile. "You were still just a baby when I left. I got a job offer from the mainland... 'entertainer'. ... It meant 'whore' and I knew it," he continued, bitterness edging his voice. "But I didn't see a life for myself on Menagerie. I went to the Chief for advice, but when he didn't tell me what I wanted to hear, I ignored him. Worst mistake of my life. I tried to convince myself for years that the life I had was fine, that I even liked it, but..." 

He trailed off, then shook his head. "... By chance I met a mercenary from the Guild... the organization both Kai and I belong to now. She rescued me from that place. She taught me to fight, taught me to be my own person. And then she died. ... And a lot of people said I did it." 

His jaw clenched and worked briefly. "... And I let them say it because it was my fault. Same difference. After that I had nothing, so... I let my life be about taking everything from others. I didn't have any heart or pride left to stop me from being the worst person I could be. My hands are stained with blood up to the shoulders. I don't belong in a room full of noble-hearted kids just trying to do good, I belong in a cell somewhere," he almost spat out. 

Then, more softly, he added, "But I can't make things even a little bit right from a cell. So I'm here. I'm home. I'll do whatever you need me to do to help."

"... Um..." Reese stepped forward a bit from Kai's side after Grey's story had had a moment to settle. "I... guess my story isn't quite as... rough as all this. Oh hey hi I'm Reese Chloris some of you guys probably remember me from Vytal and the... the Battle of Beacon," she added, her wave turning a little lame before her hand dropped. "Um. Yeah, so, uh, lemme see, I'm from Baoula, my folks are pretty well-off, and I've got _seven_ older brothers." 

Jaune winced visibly. "My condolences," he groaned.

"Eheh. And uh I guess I always kind of sucked ass at being the girl my parents had been hoping for all eight times. All I wanted to do was race bikes down hills and hunt baby Nevermores and listen to my grandad's Huntsman stories. I mean it's not like we hated each other we just kind of had to negotiate every part of my life so that if I wanted to take martial arts classes I also had to take ballet and if I wanted to go to combat school I also needed flower arranging and dressmaking classes and they kept hoping it'd take but here the fuck I am. And at some point they stopped asking if I was gonna come home and I stopped offering and that's... pretty much it."

She hesitated, before adding quietly, "Oh, yeah, and I watched May Zedong and most of her team die in front of me a day after giving her her first kiss. There's that."

'Goddamn,' Kai thought with a wince, reaching out and drawing Reese in against her side as well. 'Fuck you world if you think I'm gonna let you keep fucking with her.'

"We about done with all this?" the red-eyed man earlier identified as 'Qrow' muttered, glancing aside and swirling the whiskey in his glass. "Somewhere out there the town's border wall is pissed at us and doesn't even know why."

"Qrow," 'Oz' said evenly, turning hard green-gold eyes on him.

"Oh c'mon, Oz, you gotta be-"

" _Qrow._ "

"... Dammit." Qrow huffed, leaning forward and setting the glass down, clasping his hands in front of his lower face and staring ahead. Without his head moving, those red eyes slowly lifted and appraised the room, seeing all the eyes resting on him. Finally he let out a huff and sat back in his chair, rubbing his face.

"Qrow Branwen. And my life is a curse," he said in that low rasp, practically spitting the words out bitterly. "My Semblance... is bad luck. For everyone around me. I control it as well as I can, but... I always wind up hurting the people around me. And it weighs on me, okay?" he snapped, before the anger bled away almost as quickly as it had come. 

"... It weighs on me. Because I always worry when I'm gonna hurt someone I love. So I drink. I sneer. And I make bad, bad decisions." He lowered his eyes in shame, taking a shuddery breath, before finally letting out something that he's obviously been carrying a long, long time. "Like falling in love with my best friend's wife."

Ruby's silver eyes widened, a hand coming up to cover her mouth. Then her expression softened as her hands lowered. "That's... why you and dad had that falling out."

"Yeah... because I got drunk and stupid one night and I admitted to him what he'd only suspected before," Qrow said with a sigh. "Nothing ever happened, Ruby, and I never tried to make anything happen, I have that much control, but... the guilt, and the loss, it eats me alive every day. I miss her so much."

"Is missing her why my... why Raven is like that?" Yang asked softly.

"Maybe part of it." Qrow shook his head. "I know it sounds arrogant to say it to her daughters, but you two don't really realize just how special Summer was. Every kid thinks their mom could pluck down the pieces of the moon any time she wanted... it's a hell of a lot more striking thing when you feel that way about someone you met as an adult. Losing her... did things to all of us. We were never the same people afterward. Raven was never exactly mom of the year material, or sister of the year material for that matter," he added with a whiskey-rasp snort. 

"... But yeah. There was more heart and soul to her around Summer. How could there not be? That's what Summer did. That's who she was. Raven was never a great person to start with, if I'm honest... but we were all worse people for losing her." 

After that he drifted into silence, red eyes far away, probably turning over thoughts of what he wished could have been.

Kai realized that it was down to two. She turned her own red eyes to green-gold ones. Stared. Waited.

She gave first.

That usually didn't happen. It actually sort of intrigued her.

"My name's Kai. Just Kai. Three letters, randomly assigned by slavers. They put a chip in my neck and blanked my brain, and the person I was before that ceased to be. ... Died. I have no clue who she was... if she was someone with a family that loved her that just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, or discarded trash sold for pocket change. I just woke up in a cell one day, and then I got sold. 

"And for the first few years I actually enjoyed myself... I didn't know any other life, any other existence, and I... I loved the two slaves who were mentoring me. The closest thing I had to parents. But then they were gone. And the place I thought of as home was gone. And I had nothing but a life filled with abuse and degradation and risk, for the sake of a man that, whatever he actually felt, sure as hell acted like he hated every breath I drew.

"All that and trying and failing pretty much every day to make life better for the only family I had left, the other slave in the house. And then I found my way back to one of the people that raised me and we stumbled right into a war. And then she sent us here... to get us away from it."

Kai hesitated briefly, looked at Ilia. And couldn't help but smile.

"Because... we're her daughters. And I think she wanted us to be more than safe... she was hoping we'd find somewhere to make a home." Kai looked aside at Reese. Over at Grey. "... And we have."

And then there was one.

All eyes were on him. Everyone was waiting. Kai could tell that he was battling an intense flight response... that he knew that if he backed down or tried to lie now, there would be complete rebellion. That there was no turning back after inducing that much pain and honesty from the group.

"Thank you, everyone," he said slowly, nodding once. "As painful as this has been, I truly think we will all be the better for it. Wounds have been opened... but they will no longer fester for being exposed to the air. I will not draw back from this... I will not hide or shrink. You have offered up your shameful secrets, your stinging regrets, the truth of you. And I will now give you the truth in turn."

He took a deep breath, let it out. "Know that it has been ages of the world since I shared these things with anyone else. And I am deeply afraid of what you will do when you hear. I can only ask for your understanding, as we have all extended it to each other here tonight."

He closed his eyes briefly, then opened them. "The form you see before you is that of Oscar Pine... a simple boy from the country who has not yet lived a long enough life to have any secrets of consequence, if he will forgive me for the somewhat condescending statement," he began dryly, briefly canting his head to the side as if listening to some silent rebuke before continuing. 

"The consciousness speaking to you is that of Professor Ozpin, former headmaster of Beacon Academy. ... But that is not my first name. My true name is 'Ozma', and I am an incredibly old consciousness... one whose fate and story is inextricably connected to that of the enemy we face that you know as 'Salem'."

"You mean... you've been fighting her ever since you learned about her, right?" Jaune asked, lifting his face, confusion written all over it.

"No, Mister Arc. Our connection goes back to before the beginning of what we now know as Remnant. To the world that came before. When Salem was not as she was now... nor was I. But when she became a threat to the world, I was sent to stop it... a task I have failed at over, and over again."

Ozma lowered Oscar's head. "Like Mister Heliotrope, I have done many awful things in my very long life. But never out of malice, or hatred, always... for the greater good. My age and experience did not render me immune to mistakes, and I have made many. I... I am afraid I am not strong enough to tell you the full depth of some of the things I have done," he murmured, his hand actually shaking as he brought it up to press to his face. "... And for that, I will ask your forgiveness. But there are some things, some mistakes, that no man should have to speak of again... especially in a body too young to be drinking."

He took a deep breath, let it out again, and slowly raised his head. "And the truth is... the truth is that I long ago asked a very, very reliable source how I could defeat Salem. And I was told... that she could not be."

"What?" Ruby whispered softly, her face falling as a shock of fear ran through the room.

"You bastard," Qrow snarled, rising to his feet violently enough that he almost overturned his chair.

"Then what was it all _for_?!" Jaune almost howled as he bolted to his own feet, blue eyes flashing. "Everything you did to Pyrrha, the schools, all our fighting, this mission?!"

"It was to protect the most people I could for as long as I could," Ozma replied in a pained tone, green-gold eyes shimmering. "Please... please, you must understand, I did what I did because I thought it was the only way to let the world keep going on at least a bit longer. My only other choice was to give up entirely, to sit down and die again and again as I watched the world end around me. So many of you in this room would never have existed at all if I had not decided to hold off Salem as long as possible... can you not at least see that there was some worth in that?"

The room was silent, a mixture of anger and near despair heavy in the air.

But no one was willing to admit they'd have rather they and those they loved never got the chance to be born just for the sake of the truth.

"So what is this mission even for, now?" Nora asked softly, lowering her head.

"It is for _hope_ , Miss Valkyrie," Ozma insisted gently. "The faintest glimmer of a hope. Never before since I learned of Salem's immortality have I had a hope that there might be a true way to win." Then his brow furrowed. "But never before did I think the universe was so wide as to house other worlds with life... that we in fact live in a _multiverse_ , full of infinite possibilities. Perhaps what I thought was for certain was limited to that worldview... perhaps there is more to existence than I, or any of the other powers involved in this struggle, knew."

"Wait wait wait, you're saying you're basing this on my being here?" Kai spoke up, frowning. "Did you not hear me? I'm nobody. From nowhere."

"I do not agree with that last statement. But further, I am not basing it on you alone, but rather what your presence here represents." Ozma stood slowly, wincing a bit as he did, obviously a bit sore. "A wider possibility. A change in the wind. The fact that there are far more variables in play that could be known. I now think that we should push ahead with our immediate goals... keeping Salem from assembling the artifacts, and protecting as many people as we can from her. I know this sounds strangely optimistic, considering everything that's been said up until now, but I think perhaps we should simply... 'do what we can and hope for the best'."

There was a stunned silence after that... finally broken by Yang snorting. "Well, hell, that's how I live my life anyway."

"Language!" the rest of Team RWBY snapped in various levels of mock outrage, Blake instantly blushing and looking worried as if the reflexive teasing might be taken the wrong way.

Yang rolled her eyes. "Iiiii'm gonna be living that one down for awhile, aren't I?" She lifted her left hand to rub her face... then looked over at Blake and gave her a small smile of reassurance.

Qrow stared at Ozma for long moments... then slowly sank back into his chair before stabbing a finger at him. "You and I are going to have a long talk in private later that you're not gonna enjoy."

"More than one long talk, I should think," Ozma murmured, before holding up a hand at the flash in Qrow's eyes. "Unwarranted levity, forgive me. But let me say, Qrow, what I believe you are thinking, it is not what you dread. Anything related to yours or Team STRQ's experiences with me, I will no longer keep from you."

He turned to look at the rest of the room. "In a matter of weeks we will leave Haven on the Argus Express, and hopefully be in Atlas soon after. I think a long talk with James Ironwood is also long overdue... I have little hope of it working out particularly well, but... better he hear the truth from me rather than in some other way. You've certainly all borne it better than I was expecting," he added wryly.

"The only thing worse than being lied to is having to find out about it from someone else," Ilia spoke up, shaking her head.

"Yes... you're probably right, Miss Amitola. However, you remind me of an unrelated matter that I think we must now address." Ozma rounded the low table to stand in front of Kai, green-gold eyes taking in her and the three clustered around her. 

"Whatever my mistakes, one of the things I am truly and unquestionably proud of is the founding of the Huntsmen Academies. For all the shame that follows me through my many lives, the fact that I have given so many young people direction, strength, and most importantly a home will be forever something I take pride in. And now I see that what I have established there survives outside of the schools... that it has become part of our culture, that it extends to even those who arrive here from far-off places. 

"Do not mistake my words for bragging," he continued, shaking his head briefly. "Instead understand they are words of gratitude. Seeing you make a family here, Miss Kai, a family of Huntsmen and Huntresses, of your own will and own volition, willing to stand between the innocent and evil with them at your side... thank you. You have given me more hope in that than anything else."

"... Is that who I am?" She tried to sound nonchalant, tried to push a corner of her mouth up into a wry grin. But the words came out far too sincere, too genuinely wondering. "Someone who stands between the innocent and evil?"

"Only time will tell, but... say that experience has given me the ability to judge character. ... Mostly reliably. And I do not think that is who you always were... but I think it is someone you were ready to be. And someone you have become. And to that end, I feel like I must exercise a privilege I reserved for myself long ago, one last time perhaps... but I have rarely been more proud to do so."

Ozma straightened his back and shoulders, obviously trying to exude solemnity and maturity despite his poor farmer's clothes and youthful body. "Kai. Ilia Amitola. Reese Chloris. Grey Heliotrope. You are... Team KACH," he declared evenly, pronouncing the acronym 'cash'. "Leader... 

"Kai Sterling."

"Kai..." The redhead's throat seized up, cutting off the words for a moment, her eyes stinging and voice coming out in a soft rasp once she managed to speak. "You're... giving me a name?"

"I am offering it to you. As yours to take, if you want it. Long ago, two of the four kingdoms banned virtually all forms of self-expression, believing that any emotions at all were too dangerous in attracting the Grimm. What ensued was the Great War... a war to take back the right to be human. And ever since, we have named our children for colors. If you are to fight for Remnant, it seems only right that you be offered a proper Remnant name.

"But we also like to do things in layers here. Sterling... a word associated with silver," he continued, eyes flicking just briefly towards Ruby before settling back on Kai. "But it has another meaning. It is the meaning that I see when your team looks at you. When you declare that you will fight for an entire world to protect them, and I hear the sincerity in your voice, it is the thought that comes to mind."

"It means 'of the highest quality'," Blake joined in softly, smiling at Kai.

Kai's throat tightened again. This time she could do nothing but nod.

"Very well then. Team RWBY. Team JNPR. Team KACH. You will all join us in this... possibly doomed quest. But we will all try to have hope that it is not."

"Team KACH, now that's what I'm talking about," Grey chuckled, lifting a hand and aiming his knuckles towards Kai, who managed a smile and gave him the bump he wanted. "Feels like a good omen, like we might actually get paid before this is all over."

"Dreams are good to have, apparently," Kai chuckled a little, still fighting not to just start crying fully.

"Um, but, Prof-... er... Ozma," Nora said, glancing back and forth at her teammates, all of them looking a little pained. "We're... really just Team JNR now. I guess."

"Miss Valkyrie, who is in charge of team names here, you or I?" Ozma answered with obviously affected primness, turning towards her and giving her a long, even look before smiling, his voice gentle but warm as he continued. 

"I look at all three of you and I see the presence of Miss Nikos everywhere. Not just the trinkets, the mementos, the physical things you have carried forward... I see her written in your movements, your faces, your very souls. She is still with us as long as the three of you are. As far as I am concerned, Team JNPR stands before me, whole and unbroken. And I cannot currently imagine a day where that ceases to be true. Can you?"

At some point in that speech, Nora had started crying quietly, covering her face with both hands. Tears silently streamed down Ren's cheeks as he pulled his partner to him, holding her against his chest, head bowed. Jaune's eyes wandered to the shield and sword leaned against the side of the chair... then wandered up to his forehead, brushing fingertips against it.

It didn't take an expert body language reader to realize he was imagining a forehead pressing to his as he woke up.

"No sir," Jaune whispered. "I can't.

"Good. Now, I imagine we all have a lot to digest, and likely quite a bit more discussion to have between ourselves. But for now, let us continue to do what we can to repair the damage to Haven, and to ready ourselves for our mission... our quest. We all have a lot to do... saving the world is busy work," Ozma added with another almost playful smirk.

* * *

"Kai Sterling. Pleased to meet you."


	27. Interlude 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Kai caught on to Ozma's game eventually.

"I realized later he'd manipulated all of us.

"Not with the name he offered me, not the kind things he said, or the truth he offered. Those were, I am 99.999% certain all offered sincerely, out of kindness, from his heart.

"But he set us up to bare ourselves. To out everything.

"And hopefully emotionally exhaust ourselves. Leave less energy for rage to be directed at him. Have us feeling that if we had been keeping all these secrets, how could we really, truly blame him?

"I don't think he sat there and thought it out, planned it. I don't think he went 'Hmmm, this is how I'll get them all to not beat the crap out of me.' I think he'd just been manipulating the people around him subtly and gently for so long that he'd forgotten how to be straight-up.

"My relationship with Ozma was always a complex one. Ultimately I couldn't help comparing that old man to  _ the _ old man, looking at the two people who had effectively seized control of my life through very different methods.

"In the end though I think the biggest difference was that Ozma was at his core a good person, and Doonian sure as fuck wasn't. Ozma was a good person who'd done a lot of shitty things out of a literally desperate desire to save as many other people as he could; Doonian was a guy who, in the course of serving himself and his own wants, had done one or two maybe minorly decent things here and there over the course of his life.

"Like I said, most people I've met, they don't really count as Good or Evil, not with the capital letters. Doonian had done at least one worthwhile, selfless thing I knew of... he'd let Zee go rather than see her caught in a war. And over time I'd learn more of some of the awful shit Ozma had done.

"Salem, or 'Physical Satan' as we sometimes liked to call her, was in some ways a comforting opponent. She was Evil. She hadn't always been... and fuck knows eventually I'd sympathize with what she'd been through on the path to getting there... but now she was. We were off to fight Evil and there was something that was buoying and heartening about that.

"Dealing with the normal people along the way that weren't Good, or Evil, but a spiral of multiple things stretching across their souls... that was always harder."


	28. Chapter 20

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the fairytale is over.

December 20, 244 AGW, 9:00 AM (Remnant 4482)

"So. You, uh... you think we should talk?"

Blake lifted her eyes a little from her cup of coffee, ears twitching just a little. She tried to keep open dread off of her face. "Well. We can always talk, certainly," she said slowly, setting the cup down on the table and directing all her attention to the blonde at the stove.

Ruby and Weiss had already exited the house bickering earlier in the morning over whether to stay in, go out, or meet up with Team KACH for breakfast before the eventual training. Jaune, Nora, and Oscar were still asleep, and Ren was meditating in the other room, waiting for the smell of sausage and bacon to permeate up the stairs and rouse his partner, drawing her downstairs where she could be stuffed with pancakes lest she be in a Mood all day.

"I mean, I dunno... anything," Yang offered after a moment, flitting her spatula through the air briefly. There hadn't been much talking between them in the two days since Ozma's revelation... as if both were waiting for the other to hand them a map past the other's minefield. "Liiiike... what do you want for Solstice?" she added in an almost chirp.

Blake grinned, almost pointed out that Yang had left her shopping off criminally late... 

... until of course it kicked back in that until a few days ago, Yang had never known if she'd see Blake again, and thus buying her a Solstice present would have been rather depressing.

"I, um..." Blake trailed off, picking up her coffee and sipping. "I'm not sure giving presents is a great idea. You know... since we're leaving soon and all."

"Ah, yeah, yeah, that's true, I guess." Yang piled the scrambled eggs out of the skillet and into a bowl before turning to set it on the table. "Hm. ... Well. There's practical stuff?"

"That seems like a good idea, yes," Blake allowed with a bob of the head.

"... Orrrr if we're not really going to talk about Solstice," Yang said slowly. "Maybe we should talk about how you just spent the last half hour flinching whenever I reached for anything."

Blake flinched.

"Yeah, like that."

"I... ... Yang I'm  _ trying _ ," Blake whispered, looking off to the side. "It's not like I can help it."

Yang pressed her lips together, just a flicker of anger passing across her purple eyes... before she nodded slowly. "Yeah. You're probably right," she said after a moment, starting to fill a plate.

Blake began fixing a more modest plate for herself after a moment as well. "I'm sorry."

"No, I get it. We need some time to adjust and get back to normal," Yang allowed, bobbing her head. "I guess... it's not fair to expect you to get over the arm right away," she added with a soft scoff. "Took  _ me _ long enough."

"... Was it difficult?" Blake murmured, more poking at one of the sausage links than anything.

"Mm-hmm." Yang just nodded, purple eyes on her plate. "I've honestly only been anything like... normal... pretty recently. But hey... it'll all be okay, right?" she added, grinning and reaching her left hand across the table to rest it over one of Blake's.

The golden-eyed woman's feline ears lay down a little. There was something about the way that Yang said 'it'll all be okay' that made her feel something... wasn't right, but she couldn't put her finger on it.

"Blake?"

"I'm... sorry, I got distracted." Blake shook her head quickly. "No, you're right, we just need time. And... Yang, I know that it frustrates you when people just leap to offer help, you told me that when we had  _ yesterday's _ talk," she said wryly. "But... if you do need help... with anything, not just things about your arm... I hope you understand that I meant it when I said I'll be here from now on. And you can rely on me."

"... That'll take a little time too," Yang murmured, smiling sadly at the pain that flickered across Blake's eyes. "But we'll get there."

They talked a lot more now.

Blake thought about it as she pulled on her coat and headed out, the area of Mistral near Haven lightly chilly in the winter, the faintest promise of Solstice snow on the air. Ozpin... Ozma... urging them to open up had been painful, but it had also been cathartic. There had been such a sense of relief in the aftermath, even with all the other things that had come out, that the rush of it had been very nearly addicting.

So all of their own accord, she and Yang had had a nice long talk yesterday, in private. It had started with Yang reaching for something on a shelf in the kitchen and Blake had, without really thinking, hopped up and tried to go get it for her. 

Now she knew not to do that. 

Yang was probably right... it would probably just take time. They'd already pushed past a lot of the mistrust that Blake's departure had caused just by admitting how much pain had been there, and now they needed to lay out some rules, boundaries, understandings. They'd be okay.

... Then why didn't it feel okay?

'Well for one thing you've been back together three days and she hasn't outright flirted with you once.'

Blake rolled her eyes at her own observation. Ridiculous. They may have gotten past some of the distrust, but flirting was part of... Normal Yang to Normal Blake. They were still... Healing Yang and Skittish Blake. ... Not that it wasn't always kind of Something Yang and Skittish Blake but.

'No, there's something else wrong.' Blake frowned as she made her way towards the shops, with every intention of buying everyone a book for Solstice no matter what she'd said. "Why do I keep coming back to what she said? "It'll all be okay" is a completely normal thing to say without thinking about it...

'... So why did she reach for me with her left hand when she said it?'

Weiss sat back against the inside of the border wall, huffing and hugging her arms around herself a little bit.

'Dolt.'

She'd somehow wound up getting into an argument with Ruby over the simplest of things, which... was actually quite normal. Very normal really.

Except somehow it didn't feel normal and Weiss had wound up storming out of the house, Ruby following her for a short distance trying to continue their argument until finally pouting and zipping off somewhere.

'What is wrong with her?' Weiss thought morosely. Ruby was acting like nothing had happened... like they'd just popped out of their Beacon dorm room for a nice little vacation to Haven for Solstice. It was ridiculous.

And now Weiss was picturing their dorm room, the silly improvised bunk beds they'd all rigged up, all the posters and Blake's books, moldering in the dark, some Beowolf nesting in the closet where they'd all fought over the space and-

She clenched her eyes shut tightly and squeezed her arms around her middle more.

'Stop it.'

"Hey, Weiss, s'up?"

She opened her eyes, giving the very red woman in front of her a mildly exasperated look. "Hello, Kai."

"A thousand pardons. Good day, my lady," Kai amended, giving a little twirl of her hand and bowing, though the twinkle in her red eyes made it hard to take as anything but the most gentle teasing.

Weiss huffed, and almost smiled.

"You're here about an hour early for practice," Kai noted as she settled down next to the younger woman, pulling out a pack of cigarettes and half-tossing one out of the pack and between her lips. "Mind if I...?"

Weiss wrinkled her nose. "I'd rather you didn't."

Kai shrugged her shoulders and bobbed her head in a little 'whatcha gonna do' motion, and though the bright green cigarette stayed between her lips, she made no move to light it. "So what's got you settled here so early? Surely not that happy to get a crack at hand-to-hand lessons."

"I can't say that I am," Weiss admitted primly. Then she huffed again, before squirming back against the wall a little more. "Kai... you're good at understanding what people are thinking and feeling, right?"

"It is one of those little skills I had zapped into my spine, yus," the redhead answered nonchalantly... then smiled sheepishly at Weiss's wince. "Sorry, I'm tryna get out of the habit of saying stuff like that, honest."

"I wish you would," Weiss murmured, before brushing her hands up under her skirt, gathering it so she could lift her legs and hug them, tucking her lower face against her knees lightly. "... Does Ruby secretly hate me?"

"Wow you don't go small on asking for the body reading, do you?" Kai snorted, drawing the cigarette from between her lips to give it a little twirl around her fingers and tuck it above an ear. She regarded Weiss for a moment, then said, "Lemme guess. You see how Yang and Blake both look at the other like they're waiting for something to literally explode, and you're wondering why the hell Ruby isn't acting that way around you."

"... I  _ did _ leave her," Weiss muttered, tucking her face against her knees again. "Even if it wasn't my choice. ... Or I thought it wasn't."

Kai was silent for a few moments, looking up at the overcast sky, perhaps collecting her thoughts. "Listen. Weiss. I've known a lot of people over the years. Most of them are pretty complex, and others are... well, simple."

"Well she's certainly  _ that _ ," Weiss scoffed under her breath.

"Yeah. She is." When Weiss shot her a look, Kai grinned a bit broader. "Okay, let me rephrase, I mean  _ straightforward _ . What you see is what you get. Now, is Ruby covering some hurt with a lot of happy? Yeah. But I think if the hurt was about you she'd have told you by now. Just strikes me as the sort. Maybe you're looking a gift smol in the mouth."

"Could you not use that word around me?" Weiss groaned.

"Sorry, sorry, I'll keep it in mind. Point is... kinda seems like Ruby's already forgiven you, if she was ever bothered in the first place." Slim red eyebrows raised. "I think it sounds like you haven't forgiven yourself though."

Weiss pursed her lips and stared at the ground.

Then her stomach growled, causing her face to turn solid red.

"Aaaand sounds like you got into an argument with her and skipped breakfast," Kai added with a snort, standing up and offering a hand.

"And what, exactly, are you proposing?" Weiss asked, eyeing that hand.

"I'm proposing you get up and get some food in you, so that you don't distract from everyone's training with that Grimm in your belly," Kai teased, Weiss making a face in reply, which only made the redhead grin more. "C'mon, there's a place nearby that sells this great fried bread, you can get all sorts of stuff on top of it or in it, it'll fill ya up."

"Oh... fine." Weiss huffed one more time before taking the proffered hand and hauling herself to her feet. She followed after Kai, still hugging herself a bit, before frowning. "Really, they just  _ fry _ bread?"

"Hell yeah they do."

"That linkup is gonna snap if you put it on that setting!"

"No it won't that's an RDC linkup not SDC crap I've tested 'em to twelve PSI over this it'll do fine."

"Not if you have it soldered  _ there _ !"

"Oop oh shit you are actually right well there's one prototype failure averted."

"Oh my gawwwwwwwwd would you two shut uuuuuuuuup?" Ilia groaned, rolling over in Bolin's bed and pulling his pillow over her head.

"You're the one still in bed at past nine in the morning the fuck are you nocturnal?"

Ilia glowered out from under the pillow. "Was that a Faunus crack?"

"Would you rather it was a lesbian crack? Woop!" Reese yelped, ducking the thrown pillow, not that it came anywhere close to hitting. "Hey hey HEY! Del-i-cate ma-chi-ne-ry here!" she called, indicating her and Ruby's current project with both hands.

"You're making a pie chucker! It's not delicate and it's not worthwhile now shut up I wanna SLEEP before class! Gawd," Ilia huffed. "Bad enough tryna get my god damn schedule adjusted to living like a fucking daytimer without you two making whatever mechanical nonsense comes into your heads."

"Gosh you guys swear a lot," Ruby whispered, silver eyes widening a little.

"No no no Ilia and I swear  _ some _ ," Reese amended, holding up a finger and wiggling it. " _ Kai _ swears a  _ lot _ !"

"Why?" Ruby asked, wrinkling her nose as she started tightening a few screws while Reese redid her solder job.

"I dunno ask her."

"No I mean why do you? I mean I get her and I guess Ilia, 'cause Ilia was on that other place too or whatever, how come  _ you _ swear?"

"Eh. Just like it s'all." Reese grinned at the other short woman. "Hey you should totally give it a try."

Ruby opened her mouth. Closed it. Looked thoughtful briefly. Then quickly shook her head. "No no, I'm pretty sure my dad would instantly teleport into the room and shove soap in my mouth."

"Well there's a Semblance for the books."

There was a light rap on the door before it opened slightly, blue eyes peeking in. "Hello?"

"Oh, hey Silvia!" Ruby chirped.

The door opened a bit more, the 'local' Ilia poking her head in. Though she'd shifted her hair to a pale, almost shining platinum blonde color. The game of rock-paper-scissors had been rather intense, but once she'd lost she'd elected to simply add two letters to her name and change her hair color to be more distinct. "Hey guys, am I interrupting anything?"

"Just your sister griping at us for being fun."

Snorting softly, Silvia slipped the rest of the way into the room and made her way to Ilia's bed, the other chameleon Faunus sitting up. "Sorry. We're having some trouble getting through to Menagerie because of some weather that's moved in, and you're better with that than I am now, could you come help?"

Ilia sighed and nodded. "Yeah, give me a minute to get dressed and I'll be right there." Then she rolled her eyes as there was the  _ twang _ of an empty pie tin hitting the wall followed by hoots of success. "Gawd remember sleeping in crappy tents out in the cold?"

"I certainly do," Silvia snorted, glancing over at Ilia's current roommates. "You know there's still bunkhouses where the militia are sleeping if they're bugging you that much."

Ilia glanced over at where Ruby and Reese were laughing and excitedly talking over tweaks to the launcher's trajectory. Just a little, she grinned. "Nah. I'm good."

Pleasant.

Going out to grab a quick bite to eat with Weiss had been pleasant. The weather was, if overcast, pleasant. Yesterday's talking amongst the teams about a training schedule to get everyone used to working together and shore up the weaknesses in their styles had even been pleasant.

Kai had never had a lot of 'pleasant' in her life, she thought as she sat atop the border wall, looking out over Mistral, watching a construction crew work on repairing the front of Haven Academy, smoke curling up from the end of her cigarette. She'd had fun, and good, and exhilarating, and vindicating, but just... pleasant... that was a new one.

She kind of thought she could get hooked on it.

"Hey, bum one of those off ya?"

Kai glanced up and grinned at the sight of Qrow ambling over, hands in his pockets. "Sure." She slipped her pack out and tapped one up, proffering it to him.

Qrow slipped the smoke out, then eyed it dubiously. "Why is it green?"

"It's lime flavored." At his flat 'seriously?' look, Kai quirked an eyebrow. "Bad manners to complain about a bummed smoke."

"Point." Qrow sat down nearby, settling the cig between his lips and taking out his lighter. When he flicked it a few times and nothing came out, he gave it a disgruntled look, then accepted Kai's slender plasma lighter, the little crackling arcs of electricity briefly putting a look of amusement on his face before he used it.

They sat in a rather companionable silence for a bit before Qrow spoke up. "So since everyone else seems completely convinced, just to check... you're really, definitely not from Remnant, right?"

"I mean I could be, I guess, theoretically," Kai replied after turning it over for a moment. "But probably not this Remnant. I checked, it's only had like four dimensional contacts in the last fifty years, including the merc that picked up Grey and not including us coming here. So the odds are extremely low."

She paused, then glanced over, slowly starting to grin. "You're worried I'm yours, aren't you?"

Qrow cleared his throat and glanced away. "... Let's just say that like you said, the odds are extremely low but not impossible," he muttered after a moment, looking mildly embarrassed. "Red eyes aren't  _ that _ common a color that I didn't wind up wondering, just a little, when a tough, sharp-tongued red-eyed girl who smokes shows up. I knew you couldn't be Raven's, so the thought did cross my mind."

"Red eyes are a little more common out in the multiverse," Kai allowed, tapping ash off her cigarette. There was a weird little fluttery feeling in her chest... she wasn't entirely sure how to deal with someone who seemingly sincerely had wondered if they were blood. "Though the red-on-red bit is pretty rare. There was this guy on Makarzia though who had it... he used to imply he was my father a lot."

"Yeah?" Qrow prompted, looking over at her again.

"Yeah. Not like out of any love... just because he liked watching me squirm, I guess. Or maybe he thought it'd spark some kind of loyalty or eagerness to prove myself to him. Something."

"Guessing that didn't go over too well," Qrow suggested.

Kai was silent for a little while, thinking of all the times she'd almost let herself crumple, almost let herself believe. Even if not to Horace's face, to herself. Just so that she could feel like she didn't spontaneously manifest in a slave cell one day, that she actually came from somewhere, had a history. Then she looked at the man sitting beside her... gentle concern in his red eyes despite the carefully neutral look on his face, a bummed green cigarette in his lips.

Talking to her.

"Well. Let me put it this way," Kai finally said. "I see the way Ruby and Yang look at you. Curse or no, 'dusty old crow' or no... if I were gonna choose between the two of you, it'd be you all day."

Qrow looked off towards the construction crew, clearly trying to find something to do with that. Finally he let out a smokey snort. "Guy must have been a real dick."

"Yeah," Kai chuckled. "He was."

* * *

"It wasn't just the way Ruby and Yang looked at him.

"It was the way practically everyone reacted around him. Their body language, their microexpressions.

"When he talked, they focused in and listened. Horace got that too, but always along with little fear responses. With Qrow, there was openness. When he placed a hand on someone's shoulder they gave off comfort and relief response. When someone was struggling, their eyes shifted a little towards him, hoping for help.

"Everyone was a little bit better around Qrow Branwen. 

"He didn't see it. I think he had been living with the feeling of being a 'bad luck charm' so long that he didn't see just how much everyone around him considered him more of a blessing.

"I came into Qrow's life and he came into mine during a period of change for both of us. We'd both been alone for a long time, and both of us were now learning what it was to be among family, people that cared about us. But I think I filled a role for him that was different from the others.

"I was old enough to smoke with him, and go out drinking with him. We could talk in a way that wasn't automatically that of Adult and Youngster. If he wanted to go out to the bar, he didn't have to go out alone because I was there. He had someone he was comfortable sharing his dirty jokes with, relating with about what it was like to live a life of blood and blades.

"Qrow had a lot of students, charges, apprentices you could say. But he didn't have someone he could just live life with while still being the one with greater experience and wisdom to impart. I filled that role for him.

"For me he became the bridge between the adult life I knew and to Remnant. The strong adult male presence I'd simply never had in my life. The old man... up until then, he was the closest thing I had as a reference to a father. With Qrow I learned what 'father' could actually mean. It meant talking, laughing together, offhanded teaching of valuable life lessons and skills. It meant respect and protection.

"My moms had taught me a lot, and I loved them both beyond measure. But sometimes there's just no replacement for having a dad."

* * *

Kai lunged forward. She'd telegraphed the punch by a mile, and was gratified to see that its target at least reacted to that... and was caught completely flat-footed when she changed it up, she grabbed his wrist and drove him to the ground underneath her, twisting and raising her knee to pin his other arm. "Aaand you're dead."

Oscar pine groaned quietly under her. "Again."

It was pretty wild to Kai just how different he was when Ozma wasn't in control. She did know she could tell far more easily than the others who was 'driving'... not like the differences weren't stark, but Kai could tell just from how their eyes or fingers or head moved. It was helpful in that it helped her consider them entirely distinct people, despite the body they shared. And, well, there was one other thing.

As she shifted to get off of him and to her feet, she made sure that her chest moved to brush her breasts just in front of his face without quite making contact, but close enough that they could have very easily. Oscar valiantly tried to muffle the noise he instinctively made in his throat.

Kai knew she was awful, but flustered farmboy noises were just the best.

"Look, this is pointless!" Oscar complained as he took Kai's offered hand and got to his feet. "You're bigger, stronger, and faster than I am! How am I supposed to win?"

"Which is the problem, you're trying to  _ win _ , in that situation you need to focus on  _ not losing _ ," Kai replied. "When you're up against someone who you're outmatched against, if you can't just fuckin' shoot 'em in the face or something, the idea is to just not lose until you can run away. Hopefully until you can find something to shoot 'em in the face with."

Oscar made a bit of a face, either at the cursing or the implication, his voice sounding a bit tired as he said, "But isn't that what everyone's mad at Ozma about?" in a tone that said 'everyone' included him.

"Not everything's a metaphor, Oscar. That's fate of the world stuff, this is just a fight. And the longer you stay alive in a fight, the better your chances are for turning it around and winning."

Which, she had to think, would have been a better mindset for Ozma to take in the first place, but nevermind. She had to think he was probably berating himself for the same thing right now, so no need to say it out loud.

"Fine," Oscar huffed after a second. "But how do I even manage to run away when my opponent is that much bigger and faster than I am? I can't run away when I'm pinned."

"Focus on the utilitarian stuff, fight dirty, and don't get pinned in the first place. Reese, c'mere," Kai called, since the slight woman was currently without a partner. Waiting for her to come trotting over, she asked, "You know how to deal with that move I just did on Oscar?"

"Oh sure no way Arslan'd ever let me slack on hand-to-hand cubs gotta fight Momma Lion to prove they're ready for the hunt y'know," Reese chirped cheerfully.

'Whatever the fuck that means,' Kai thought with a grin as she gestured Oscar back. Squaring up a bit with Reese, Kai crouched, then launched into the tackle.

Reese fell backwards, her legs coming up over her and letting Kai's stomach hit them as she fell, the smaller girl twisting and shoving with both legs to send the redhead tumbling to the side. Reese flung an arm outward even as she rolled away, and it made solid contact with Kai's chin, solid enough that there was a brief crackle of scarlet energy.

"Shit!" Reese blurted even as she hopped to her feet. "Sorry I didn't mean to make contact I was aiming for the shoulders sorry Kai!"

"It's fine, didn't get through," Kai assured her as she got to her own feet, rubbing her chin a bit. 'Huh. So that's what that's like.' She was used to full-contact hand-to-hand sparring... at least from the side that didn't have to hold back. Niobe had never had to worry that anything Kai could do could even come close to injuring her, so had always instructed Kai to hit her as if it were a real fight. 

"Anyway, see Oscar? Your legs might take a beating but it's better than getting pinned. First priority, get them off you, second priority, do something to disable them. Hit the throat, or the eyes, a nerve cluster like here," she continued, stepping behind Reese and lifting an arm to indicate a particular spot. "Or, y'know, depending on the opponent, something more tender," she added with a smirk, amused as he both blushed and winced. 

"This doesn't seem that useful for fighting Grimm, though," Oscar observed with a frown. "... Or Hazel."

Reese snorted. "If a  _ Grimm _ pins you you really are just dead my dude. Actually probably that Hazel dude too from the vids I saw."

Oscar went a little pale, and didn't improve that much as Kai added, "From recent history, and what your onboard buddy has said, I don't think it's just Grimm waiting for us out there. Besides, whatever you're facing, you've still gotta do your best. Just keep fighting, Oscar. Push through and keep going, and hope to get somewhere better."

His color had returned, and Oscar nodded slowly. "Okay. Got it."

"Here, get picked on by someone your own size for awhile," Kai said with a grin, giving Reese a little shove on the head towards him. "Teach 'im but good, Reese. I'm gonna go see how everyone else is doing."

"Fine but next time we do that I'm gonna let you pin me in hopes you have your way with me!" Reese called after her, Oscar going red in the face both at that and Kai's laugh.

Kai headed towards the other groups. As one of the only ones in their large group with extensive hand-to-hand training, Ozma and Qrow had asked her help in shoring up a spot that was a fairly large weakness for most Huntresses and Huntsmen. So today's training session was all weaponless, partly to help people work on that potential necessity, partly just to help with group cohesion by pairing up people that in most cases hadn't worked much together yet.

She came to a stop, watching Weiss twirl and duck out of the way as Nora lurched after her again and again, making snatching motions with her arms each time.

"I can't tell if you're trying to fight me or hug me!" Weiss declared with a laugh that nevertheless had an edge of nervousness to it.

"I  _ am _ trying to hug you!" Nora chirped cheerfully in reply, before a near-feral glint came into her eyes. "To  _ pieces _ !"

"... Nora plz," Weiss almost whimpered with none of the laugh but all of the nervousness.

"You're gonna hafta hit back at some point, Weiss! Nora, stop throwing your arms so wide, it's not a cartoon hug!" Kai called over with a grin before moving on.

She watched Ren and Jaune working together for a moment, pretty much instantly seeing that her intervention wasn't necessary on any level. After each quick engagement of strikes, Ren would speak quietly and earnestly to Jaune, voice pitched low to speak only to him. Every so often Kai would see something flicker across Jaune's eyes... no doubt some memory of something his late partner had said in similar circumstances.

But it seemed like training and reconnecting with his team was doing him a world of good. His movements seemed steadier than before, his expressions showing he was more sure of himself. Kai made a mental note to let him keep working with Ren for a little longer before shifting his sparring partners and made her way on to the next pair.

She watched for a few moments, then stepped in, her proximity causing Ruby and Ilia to stop their spar and drop back a little. "Further back here on the ribs a bit, it's going to have more of an impact and it's closer to nerve clusters," she told Ilia, taking her wrist and guiding her palm to a spot at Ruby's side. "Ruby, good thinking focusing on the joints, but don't kick at the front of the knee unless you're a lot stronger than your opponent. Instead focus on getting into a position you can make the joint bend the way it's supposed to, use that to your advantage."

Kai paused as there was a sparkling, twinkling noise from somewhere behind her, and then the sound of something being driven into the ground at speed. "No weapons means no Semblance!" she called over her shoulder.

"Whoopsie~," Weiss's completely unapologetic voice came back.

Rolling her eyes, Kai turned back to Ruby and Ilia. "Ear if you've got a shot, chin if you don't, and-"

"'Never a closed fist to the head', yeah," Ilia interrupted with a grin, everyone having heard Kai's most oft-repeated bit of hand-to-hand advice several times by now.

"Ruby, when you're fighting someone like Ilia that you can actually match strength with, don't be afraid to block and deflect blows instead of dodging, that's gonna give you a lot more chances to counterattack."

"Got it!"

"And don't actually break anything!" Kai added to the pair as she made her way on to the next duo... who weren't sparring at all, but standing with one behind the other.

"... nnnnnh..." Blake squinted at her hands, which she'd raised palm upward in front of her, fingers lightly curled. Purple light briefly crackled around her fingers, before she huffed and slumped her shoulders a little. "I don't see the point of this, I thought we were supposed to be learning  _ unarmed _ fighting, and without Semblance."

"Because this isn't Semblance, it's  _ Aura _ ," Grey insisted. "And if you learn to do it right it takes practically no Aura at all. They can take your weapons away from you, they can beat you down until you don't have the Aura to use your Semblance, but if you still have enough energy to move you can use this."

Blake tossed him a dubious glance over her shoulder. "If it's so easy and reliable, why use your weapon's claws?"

Grey chuckled. "Because Hell Ticket's claws don't require any concentration at all to use, and they work a whole lot better on armor. Aura claws won't do a damn thing against metal, but it'll work just fine on faces, joints, and anything else armor tends to leave bare. Now, c'mon, you're trying too hard, just focus on the  _ image _ ," he urged. "You're a cat, it's the easiest thing in the world to have claws!"

Having begun staring at her hands and focusing until her Aura crackled again, Blake's ears lowered and she shot him an annoyed glance. "I am not a  _ cat _ , I am a  _ feline Faunus _ ."

"That might be," Grey replied, steely eyes actually sparkling as he grinned. "But your first word was still 'mew'."

Blake's face went completely red, no doubt from some combination of Grey knowing her first word and that it was in fact so kittenish. Then there was a soft  _ shk _ noise that yanked her eyes back forward, and her golden eyes widened at the sight of the scintillating purple energy claws coating her fingertips. "I did it!"

"Good, good,  _ great _ ," Grey urged, obviously without thinking laying his hands on Blake's shoulder. "But you're still using up too much Aura for them. Okay, relax, relax, don't let the Aura flow out of them but just relax a bit..."

Kai smiled. It was absolutely heartwarming seeing Blake's face light up with childlike glee at succeeding at the new technique. She was still getting to know the other woman, but Blake seemed like one of those people who had known happiness a little too rarely over most of her life. 

It seemed to her that the people that most deserved to be happy were the ones who got to be the most rarely.

Then she paused, turning and looking back across the line. At Jaune grinning as he actually managed to get a solid strike through Ren's defenses. Ruby and Ilia laughing over some tumble they'd taken together. Weiss giggling and plucking some bits of dirt out of Nora's orange hair as the stockier woman poked her tongue out teasingly. Reese grinning as she guided Oscar through a series of strikes in slow motion, the tan farmboy starting to smile as well.

Then again.

Kai smiled, moving on to the last pair, her face settling back into a bit of a neutral expression as she watched Qrow and Yang spar.

It was clear that this was more just them having a bit of a fun, testing themselves against each other after not having had this opportunity for awhile. Both were skilled, though Yang's style was definitely the more refined of the two... Qrow fought more like someone who'd taken bar brawling so seriously and studied it with so much diligence that it had turned into a legitimate martial art. From the rapidfire exchange of blows, it was clear that Qrow wasn't taking it easy on her, despite both of them obviously enjoying themselves.

'Except he is,' Kai thought rather grimly.

Blake had come to her just before class, much like Weiss seeking her advice on someone's body language and behavior. At the time Kai had just told her that maybe Yang had wanted the full sensory feedback of touching her with a flesh and blood hand, but she'd been turning it over in her head, and now as she watched Yang fight, she understood the problem all too well.

Something had to be done about it, too. Kai just wasn't sure whether her relationship with everyone would survive what had to be done.

"Hey," she called to Qrow, keeping her voice casual. "Mind if I cut in?"

Qrow drew back from Yang, scoffing just a bit and tossing the redhead a smirk. "Oh, certainly, if you have something to teach that I don't,  _ Professor _ Sterling," he teased, ambling backwards and tucking his hands in his pockets. "I'm just the combat school teacher, after all. But if you want a beating from my best hand-to-hand student I don't mind."

"Awww yeah let's do this thing!" Yang declared cheerfully, hopping up and down a little, clearly delighted at the idea of getting to go up against a new opponent that was, if not her own muscle mass, within an inch of being her own size.

"Yeah," Kai answered, stepping in front of Yang but not yet taking her stance, instead locking red eyes to purple. "Take it off."

Yang knew what she meant immediately, it was clear. The flash of naked terror across her eyes said that enough. Then she yanked on irreverence, snorting loudly and tossing her head. "Whew, aren't you direct? I mean you're cute, sure, but Blake and I are still trying to work things out and figure out where we stand, so maybe the clothes can stay on for now and-"

"No bullshit, Yang." Kai's voice was completely devoid of any joking or teasing. It was weirdly both frightening and comforting to realize how much she sounded like Niobe in the days when Kai had gotten too playful and started goofing off in training for too long. "You know what I mean. Take it off."

"Hey, Kai, that's enough," Qrow half-snapped, stepping forward... then jerking to a halt as Yang held up a hand to stop him.

Yang's expression had gone serious too. The other sparring matches were starting to slow and trail off as everyone noticed the apparent drama at the end of the line. Without another word, Yang brought her left hand around to grip her prosthetic's wrist, using whatever mental command she had to disengage it from the attachment on her limb and then holding it out to Qrow to take.

Once Qrow had reluctantly taken the arm and fallen back, Yang and Kai both finally settled into their stances, then went at each other.

It was a mess.

Kai had known it would be. From what the others had said, Yang had only seriously been back to training for a few months at the very most. But she'd almost desperately hoped it wouldn't be this bad.

Yang knew all the right moves, had the head for the fight, she knew what she  _ should _ be doing even with only one arm. But every time Kai juked to the right she got skittish and moved too quickly to turn, left herself full of openings. Every time she almost attacked with the arm that wasn't there, instead of just correcting and moving into another attack she fell to pieces inside for a heartbeat. And the longer the match went on the more it piled up on her and the sloppier and more shaken Yang got.

'Fuck I hate doing this,' Kai thought, even as she did it.

She ducked under the blonde's half-panicked left haymaker and slipped in at her right side, shoving with both hands. Yang went to the ground in a sprawl, jarring hard and not even catching herself. She didn't even bother trying to get up quickly, instead looking like she was focusing on not crying as she pushed herself up onto her left forearm.

Everyone else had gathered now. Watching, staring. Some with sadness. Others with anger. Blake was visibly trembling, something bordering on rage in her golden eyes. And Kai knew it wasn't going to get any better with what she was about to say.

"The fairy tale's over, Yang."

The blonde's head whipped up to look at her, staring with hurt and confusion.

"This isn't some magical curse that was laid on you. True love's kiss won't make everything the way it was. What's happened to you doesn't go away at the end of the story. Even if happily ever after comes, it still ends with you like you are now... with only one flesh and blood arm."

"You  _ bitch _ !" Blake roared, being physically restrained by Ruby and Weiss now as she lunged forward. "You absolute  _ bitch _ !"

"She's right."

The words looked like they hit Blake like a slap, stunning her, flashing yellow eyes turning uncertain as they turned to Yang. The blonde levered herself up onto her knees, sat back onto her heels.

"She's right. I thought I'd accepted the way I was now... but that was when it was an excuse not to get out there and fight again," the blonde said quietly. "Once I put on the arm, I just told myself that... everything was gonna be  _ normal _ again someday. That it was a... a temporary thing. I could accept it, use it, even laugh about it, because it was just for now. Just something I had to use until things were normal again."

Yang wobbled a little as she got to her feet, but her chin was set and firm. "I knew I should have been practicing without the arm. Just in case something happened to it, like can happen to a weapon. But I told myself I didn't really have to, because I'd be normal again someday."

She took a deep breath. "But... it's time to face it. She's right. I'm never gonna be-"

"You're completely normal, Yang."

The blonde blinked, looked up at Kai as she spoke again.

"Yang, what happened to you, fucked up as it might be, is entirely normal," the redhead said as she moved over to Qrow, his own face a mask as she gently took the prosthetic from him. "It happens all the time in the world I live in. You have a dangerous job, you got hurt, now you need a cyberlimb. It's one of the most elementary, day-to-day things that happens. You are, I hate to inform you, astonishingly normal for someone that fights for a living."

She walked back over to Yang, holding out the gold-painted prosthetic. "You're right. You need to learn to not be afraid when you don't have it. But you also need to learn to accept it when you do."

Yang looked at her for long moments. Then she reached out and took her arm back.

Not just a prosthetic. Not just a cyberlimb.

Her arm.

She fitted it into place, her fingers twitching as they realigned to her nerves and activated again. "Right."

"Yeah. Good." Kai stuffed her hands in her pockets, turned away a bit. "... Sorry."

"You didn't have to be so harsh," Blake whispered, seeming tired now that her anger had fled.

Yang snorted. "Yeah, she did. Someone needed to say it and get it through my head. I've said it before, always either as an excuse or a cover, but this time it's just the truth... this is me now. If I'm not going to treat myself like I'm fragile or going to break, you can't either. Every single one of you saw I needed an asskicking and you didn't do it!" Yang called jokingly, pointing out in mock-accusation at the rest of the group.

After only a brief silence, Weiss snorted. "Um, have you  _ met _ you? That's a bit of a tall order."

Weiss's remark broke some of the tension, a few chuckles and even giggles playing across the group.

"Blake?" Yang said, turning purple eyes on her partner.

"Um... yes?"

"Let's have another talk, huh?" Yang grinned a little ruefully. 

"... Yes, I think maybe let's." Blake nodded, walking towards Yang, before pausing and looking at Kai, expression turning a little ashamed. "I'm... I'm sorry, about what I said."

Kai's eyebrows raised. "Wow, you're apologizing over 'bitch'?" Repeating the word clearly flustered Blake even more, and the redhead chuckled. "Hey, listen. You saw me giving your partner a hard time, you got pissed off, trust me I've been called a lot worse for a lot less. I'm... just happy if you don't hate me over it," she admitted.

"I don't," Blake quickly assured her... before grinning ruefully. "But I have no idea if I'm ever going to get used to you."

"Pretty rough, kid," Qrow rasped, frowning just a little as he walked over once the partners had departed. 

"People on Makarzia don't have a lot of time for playing it soft." It was actually Ilia who had spoken up from off to the side. "And they don't have to worry about negative emotions stirring up Grimm. People get pretty frank pretty fast. Um, with all sorts of subjects," she added, specks going a little pink.

"I mean I get on an objective level why no one wanted to say anything," Kai added, shaking her head again as a few of the others clustered around. "But Ozma asked me to help with the hand-to-hand training, and Yang seemed the most in trouble. A lot more can go wrong with a prosthetic than a flesh-and-blood limb in some situations, so..." 

She hesitated, then sighed a bit and shrugged. "Might as well be the 'space alien' who says it. I'm the outsider anyway."

Then Kai blinked as a sudden sharp silence descended on the group.

"... I'm really sorry I said that," Ruby Rose whispered finally, silver eyes looking a bit moist. "I... I didn't know that's what it was making you feel like. ... Hearing you say that stuff to Yang hurt, but I think you did it because you care about her. And we care about you," she added almost urgently. "You're not an outsider, you're one of us."

"You're our leader, Kai," Grey spoke up, saying the words for the first time. "Team KACH. Leader, Kai Sterling."

"... Seriously?" Kai asked, looking at him, trying for flippant, but the word coming out just a little watery.

"... This team's the first thing I think I've ever been really, truly proud about being a part of," he assured her, nodding once. "And you made it happen. So yeah. Seriously."

"No more 'space alien'," Nora added eagerly, shaking her head quickly. "You're not a space alien, you're a... a space  _ immigrant _ !" Then she blinked as several people turned flat looks on her. "... What?"

"Look it's  _ really _ not that big of a deal," Kai tried to assure everyone, raising a hand. "I mean, I didn't really like it, but-"

"It  _ is _ a big deal, Miss Sterling," Ozma said, Oscar's body language shifting smoothly into a more composed one and voice taking on even tones. "You said it yourself when you first met me, and I heeded it without thinking to caution others to do the same. But casual words can be the easiest to cut. We can be forgiven for not knowing at first, or for slipping up here and there in the future, perhaps... but only for the unintentional slips. If we know it hurts you and do not care, it is we who have erred."

"... 'Hurts' is probably strong," Kai muttered. "But it doesn't really feel good, no."

"I think I understand. Because as you said, it makes you feel like an outsider. And while you are from a far-away place, an outsider is not what you are. As Miss Rose said... you are one of us now, Miss Sterling. Bound to the same path and the same fate. Never forget that." He began to fold his hands as if to rest them on his can before apparently remembering he didn't have it. Clearing his throat, his posture slouched, slight gawkiness returning as he turned the body back over to Oscar.

Ilia stepped forward, wrapping her arms around Kai in a hug, and Kai smiled and ruffled the younger woman's hair. As Ilia drew back the group gradually dispersed, Qrow beginning to organize them into new sparring teams. Save that Reese lingered, stepping up, her head lowered.

"... Kai..."

"Do not." Kai frowned at her, pointing a finger. "I cannot take it if you, of all people Reese Chloris, starts making a big deal out of this."

"I... um, 'kay," Reese murmured without much of her characteristic energy, glancing away. "Just, y'know... I wanted to say that even if you're my second team leader, you  _ are _ my team leader. And I'd never want to do anything to hurt you."

"Oh for..." Kai rolled her eyes, then grinned and poked Reese on the nose. "You get a 'space alien' pass."

Reese blinked repeatedly. Then started to grin. "Really?!"

"Yeah, 'cause you're funny about it, now I hope to dragon no one reads too deeply into that and we're done with this. I'm hungry, dammit, HEY! Who else is hungry?!" she called to the rest of the group, getting a handful of agreeable cries. "Then we can punch each other in the brains later then, let's eat!"

* * *

"Like I said, I still think they made too big of a deal out of it. I didn't like it, but it wasn't really offense or pain, just... well, yeah, Ozma was a right, it was a reminder that I was an outsider.

"Then again. Maybe that would have hurt more with time.

"But in the end I didn't really mind them making a big deal out of it when it wasn't that big of a deal to me. It showed me that they were kind and considerate people... more, that they were considerate of me. That they cared about making me feel welcome.

"We hadn't been together that long, but I guess they didn't waste time on Remnant either. Life was too fragile and fraught with peril there, just like Makarzia. On Makarzia that made life cheap. On Remnant it made it all the more precious.

"Not being an outsider there was actually pretty important to me after all, I guess."

* * *

The group had settled down to eat after some members being dispatched to a nearby takeout restaurant, and Kai sat eating a plate of curry rice that had actually been prepared by human hands from separate ingredients.

'God, fuck caring about the HSPs and megafauna and everything else, I'd live here just for the food,' she thought, forking up another mouthful. 

She looked up at the sky again... clear. Not much hint of smog... Mistral was huge, but between using Dust to power everything and the continent outside of it being virtually unpopulated, there was effectively no pollution. Kai actually had to resist the urge to chain-smoke just because her lungs didn't know what to do with such consistently clean air.

Letting her mind turn over to other recent matters, Kai considered, then murmured, "I hope they're fucking."

"Uh."

'Oops, said that out loud.' Kai glanced sheepishly at Ilia beside her. "Sorry, I was just-"

"Thinking about Yang and Blake, right?" Ilia said a little sheepishly, before nodding. "It's fine. I kind of hope they are too. I mean, not necessarily... y'know." She waggled her own fork in the air. "But making up. Or getting together. Or whatever."

"Yeah?" Kai grinned and reached out to give Ilia's shoulder a little jostle. "You going all noble on me? 'I want my beloved to be happy' and shit?"

"Maybe," Ilia allowed, squirming a little and looking down. "... I want Yang to be happy too, though. I want all of us to be happy. I... wish I could be the one to make Blake happy, but I guess I've accepted that's probably not going to happen. At least, not romance-wise. But. I want to be happy too," she repeated, raising her head and smiling.

"Yeah? Anyone in mind?" Kai asked curiously.

She tried not to smirk as Ilia's eyes flicked a little towards Kai's lips, then drifted out across the rest of the group, specks going a little pink as they were drawn to certain things. Reese had decided her current most comfortable position was resting her stomach on her hoverboard braced on her elbows, pert spandex-clad ass lifted in the air as she played a game on her scroll. Ruby and Weiss were sitting next to each other, actually smiling and laughing as they talked to each other now, stocking-clad legs stretched out ahead of them in the sun and leaned back on their hands, Ruby's corset-enhanced bust lifted up a bit from her blouse. Nora's powerful but femininely-curved muscles flexing as she proved to no one in particular that she could still deadlift Jaune, much to Jaune's dismay.

"A girl," Ilia sighed with a mixture of wistfulness and delight, a smile curling her lips.

Kai laughed, just a little, reaching out to use a hand to tilt Ilia's head towards her so she could plant a kiss on the side of it. "It'll happen, Rainbow. I know it will."

* * *

"I always vaguely felt like I did Ilia a disservice by not falling in love with her.

"I know that sounds arrogant as hell, but I know how much she wanted to be in love and have someone love her back. Her crush on Blake hadn't gone quite as disastrously as her alternate's, but that just meant it had sort of cut off without any proper resolution.

"But I didn't fall in love with her for a very simple reason. It wasn't that she was the sister of my heart... remember, family roles were concepts for me. Ideas. I knew what they were but I didn't have the same social conditioning attached to them as 'normal' people do. Ilia being my sister wouldn't have stopped me from falling in love with her.

"What stopped me was that I didn't think anyone could ever possibly fall in love with me.

"I knew familial love was possible for me. I reveled in it when Niobe showed it to me, where I found it among the Slicers, and the bond that was building between me and my new found family on Remnant. But that was different. That was a love you gave someone who was in your life and there for you, a sort of... grand but generalized love.

"But love like what I could see between Blake and Yang? That soul-deep, yearning, needing love that went down to the very core of you and you weren't entirely complete without the other person anymore? I thought that was beyond me. Not because I couldn't give it, but because why give it when I couldn't receive it?

"I'd killed people for money. Sold my body. Gotten high, gotten used. I was, in fact, heavily used in general. Family could forgive you and love you after that, sure, but how was someone supposed to invite that into their bed or put a ring on it?

"So I was 100% certain that whatever Ilia felt for me in her confused mixture of affection for me, it was just a crush. Based on me being nice to her and having a hot body. Because I knew no one could ever really fall in love with me."

* * *

"Knock knock."

Kai blinked and sat up in Arslan's bed, which she'd largely taken over as her own. She'd changed into a particularly long black hoodie that she'd stolen from one of the other dressers (Bolin's, she thought?) and was quickly getting attached to to the point of already thinking of asking Reese to give her teammate apologies for it being permanently lifted. "Yeah, Qrow, s'up?"

Qrow meandered in, a box under one arm. "Hey. Bothering you?"

"Nah, everyone's out right now." Kai scooted around to sit on the side of the bed, a little surprised when Qrow sat down next to her. "S'up?"

"Just wanted to talk about today," Qrow said as he settled the box on his lap. "Heh, don't get upset, I'm not mad or anything."

"'Kay," Kai murmured, trying not to let her extreme relief show too much on her face.

"Thing is, it's like Yang said... you were right. And I knew there was a problem there, and it would've been the simplest damn thing in the world to just tell her to take the arm off and train for a while. I knew I needed to do it, knew she needed to be doing it, but... I didn't."

"You loved her too much, Qrow," Kai replied with a small grin. "That's not a sin."

"... See that's the thing, kid," Qrow said after a moment. "I could see how terrified you were that what you did would make everyone hate you. I don't think I quite realized until then how much this... being here, working everything with everyone... means to you until then, until I saw how damn scared you were of losing it. But you did it anyway."

"... Ozma asked me to help-"

"And you did. But you risked it all to do it. I keep turning it over in my head, and the thing is, I can't come to any conclusion other than that what you did, you did it out of love too."

Kai was quiet for a little while. Finally, she said, "Yang's a good person. She deserves having people love her."

"Yeah. Yeah, she does, kid." Qrow looked at Kai for a long time as well, as if trying to piece her together. But finally he shrugged, passing the box over into her lap as he stood. "Anyway, here. I'm gonna go catch some Z's."

Kai blinked, looking down at the box. "What's this?" she asked even as she opened it.

"Noticed today your boots looked like they were about to fall apart on ya, kid," Qrow said simply even as he ambled to the door. "Those'll hold you a good long while, though, know the brand, they're good stuff," he added, clicking the side of one foot against the other.

Kai stared down at the simple, and very clean and taut-looking black strap-fasten boots in the box, then up at him. "Where'd you get these?"

He paused in the doorway, giving her an odd look. "Bought 'em, of course."

"I... ... thank you," she finally managed.

"Don't mention it. Get some sleep, kid," Qrow snorted as he walked out.

* * *

"No one had ever just bought me anything new just because they thought I needed it before.

"I'm sure Ico would have done it if she could, but she knew how Doonian was by then. I had to wear or use something until it literally no longer functioned for its purpose, and then I would be allowed to buy a used replacement. If that. After Ico, it was mostly stealing stuff for myself.

"But Qrow did it for me without thinking. It just wasn't a big deal to him. He saw that I needed boots, so he bought me boots. No special occasion, no big ceremony. Here. Boots.

"I probably can't quite convey what that meant to me. How much it accelerated the feeling that was already starting to gradually grow in my heart for him. So since I said it kind of shit the first time, let me say it clearer now.

"Thanks, Dad."


	29. Interlude 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Qrow ponders the mystery that is this red-eyed foul-mouthed thing from beyond the stars.

Qrow Branwen watched through the time at Haven Academy as Kai Sterling gave out love like it was Halloween candy, and she'd bought an extra mega sized bag.

It amazed and mystified him. When Blake had told them all that the person she wanted to introduce them to, wanted to bring along on their mission, was a former slave he hadn't quite known what he expected. Maybe someone slumped, beaten down, skittish, hollow and empty.

Instead he watched her swagger into the house in a way that was oddly familiar, with a canny eye and surrounded by friends, and got just a little terrified when he saw those red eyes.

And then over the next few days, that terror morphed into something almost like longing.

He watched as she gave love to every single one of his charges like she just didn't see that it was a big deal. When Jaune started looking lost and lonely, she drifted over and started flirting with him outrageously, making him blush and then eventually laugh. When Ruby started to get quiet or look off into the distance, Kai always suddenly had a question about Remnant weapon technology. When Blake started to seem like the crowd and attention around her was a bit too much, Kai was suddenly a bit of a drama queen and drawing everyone's eye.

And on, and on.

Half the time he was fairly certain she didn't even realize she was doing it. She just did it. Like it was second nature to her.

He couldn't figure it out. How could she do that? How could she just walk into this group of people that had been strangers less than a week before and start putting herself on the line for them, looking out for them, loving them?

He was confused and it bothered him. So finally, he did what he'd always done when he was confused and needed guidance, he asked his father.

Even if things were a little strained between them right now.

"I think," Ozma had said slowly. "That what you are seeing is a result of Miss Sterling's life. From all indications, it has been one filled with deprivation, hardship, and abuse."

"I've met a lot of people who lived lives like that," Qrow had scoffed back. "It didn't turn any of them into wellsprings of love."

"Yes, but remember, Qrow, Kai also told us that she was raised with love by two other slaves. That, afterward, all she had to live for was protecting the one that remained. I believe that because of this, she has long used these connections to family as her lifeline. Her connection to what makes her human. It is the tether that keeps her soul bound to her body... if you had felt yourself in danger of losing yours, might not you be eager to find tethers wherever you could?"

That, he'd understood well enough.

It made him a little worried and a little sad. That Kai was just trying her hardest to inspire others to love her as her tether to humanity.

But the more he thought on that, too, the less it fit. What she did for others never seemed to have any strings attached... she never lingered looking for a reward, a pat on the back or a 'Good job', she just did it and then moved on.

Her hardship had somehow turned her into someone that loved easily and deeply. That looked at people, acknowledged the bad, but saw the best, and loved both without equivocation.

It was painfully familiar.

There was nothing of Summer Rose there in her manner, her walk, her face. Her laugh was either a low chuckle or loud and boisterous, her smile languid and often smug, her language crude. But the way her eyes shined with love when she looked at her friends, the insightful observations, the kindness, those were very much Summer.

The rest felt very much like him.

It hurt. It hurt a lot, unable to help thinking that Kai Sterling was what might have resulted had he and Summer Rose had a child. It hurt especially considering that with what she said, he'd never be able to shake off the idea that somewhere out there, in the great giant multiverse, that was exactly what had happened, and that then that Qrow and that Summer had their shining little light torn away from them and her memories wiped away and sold into a life of abuse and pain.

The thought made him want to kill a lot of people very messily.

But no... he couldn't go assuming things like that. Couldn't go thinking that was the case. Couldn't let himself believe that the child he'd always wanted deep, deep down inside the part of him that he usually tried not to pay attention to had just shown up on the doorstep and looked at him with awe just because he bought her a damn pair of boots.

Because he just wasn't that lucky.


	30. Chapter 21

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which it is nondescript winter holiday.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was probably like 90% original to this version of the story, utilizing only a handful of bits here and there of stuff from the original Epic of Remnant in Devious Mundanity.
> 
> The next chapter is all original.

December 25, 244 AGW, 6:30 AM (Remnant 4482)

Kai gave a hefty oof and got ready to kill something as a weight thumped onto her stomach in her sleep. She only slowed her preparations rather than discarded them when she opened her eyes and saw Reese Chloris straddling her and leaned down almost nose-to-nose. "The fuck?"

"Happy Solstice!" Reese chirped, pecking her on the nose.

"Fie on your nondescript winter holiday," Kai grunted, shoving Reese back from her.

"Awww look who's being a sulky Greengrimm," Reese snickered, before clambering off of the bed. "C'mon get up there may not be a bunch of presents under the tree but there's a big Solstice breakfast going on outside!"

Kai huffed, deciding to pull on her pants under her sleeping hoodie, but not change out of it, instead just pressing Red Legacy against her back. She saw Ilia sitting up blinking blearily and made her way over to kiss her partner's forehead. "Hey, happy Solstice and junk."

"Yeah, I guess," she muttered a bit, rubbing at her eyes.

"You wanna come to this breakfast thing Reese was yapping about?"

"... Yeah, I guess," Ilia repeated, seeming less than enthused as she got up and started changing.

Kai almost asked what was wrong, but decided that was unnecessary. This was obviously a pretty big holiday on Remnant... and she was guessing there hadn't been a lot of chances for Ilia to celebrate it since her parents died.

Still, when they saw Silvia in the hall, the twins both perked up a little and drew together, their "Happy Solstice" greeting to each other sounding warm.

'That's cute as hell,' Kai thought, grinning.

And indeed out in the courtyard there was quite a spectacle. A large tree had been brought in and set up, decorated with twinkling lights and what looked a lot like some actual Dust crystals in various colors. People were moving around... locals and the remaining members of the Faunus militia, for once not seeming to have that vague air of tension around them. It was like it had just been called off for the day, and people were smiling and talking to each other easily as they set up a long buffet table as well as other tables and chairs.

'Wild,' Kai thought, shaking her head a little as she trotted down the steps, hands in her hoodie pockets. 'Geez, if you can act like that today... eh, nevermind,' she thought, deciding to brush away the cynicism before it really got rolling.

It was, after all, Solstice.

She decided to pitch in with helping the buffet get set up, partly because it was good to be helpful and partly because it let her snitch a taste of everything before everyone else... well, except the other helpers. "So what do we do, anyway?" she asked Ilia as the two of them set up a heating tray to keep a berry cobbler warm.

"Do? Oh, you mean for the rest of Solstice?" Ilia blinked, then shrugged. "Well, assuming it's like Mantle, we do the community breakfast, then we go home to our... y'know, our families... and we exchange gifts."

"Um." Kai blinked. "Shit."

Ilia grinned. "Relax, I don't think anyone's expecting you to. Probably won't be much gift giving considering we're leaving soon anyway, plus it's not like any of us has a ton of money."

"... What'd you usually do in Mantle?" Kai asked, since she wanted to know, and Ilia didn't seem like she was actually that hurting over it.

"Well. Mom and Dad were putting all of their money into my schooling, so not a lot," Ilia answered after only a brief hesitation, hefting up a large container of cider with Kai and carrying it back towards the table to set on the dispenser base. "They usually gave me poems they wrote, or sometimes hand-carved little toys or games they'd probably traded with some of the other people in the slums for. One year my dad gave me a little glass capsule with a pretty Dust crystal in it as a locket... I guess he probably stole it, the Dust I mean," she admitted. "If I'm lucky, one of their friends is keeping that stuff somewhere. ... Except I guess that's all Silvia's, here, huh?"

"It's both of ours," Silvia asserted as she walked up and set out a tray of cookies. "When we get back there one day, if we can get them back, we'll share it. Okay?"

Ilia's smile returned, her shoulders relaxing. "... Okay."

"You're good peeps, Silvy," Kai assured her, leaning in to kiss the platinum-haired girl's forehead. 'Ah, the pink specks are almost as cute on her, gotta say.'

Once the buffet was finished, it was still a little while until the start of the actual meal, so Kai wandered over to look at the tree. It was there she was approached by Ghira and Kali Belladonna, both of them smiling. "Happy Solstice, Kai."

"Hey, happy Solstice," Kai greeted, turning with a grin. It was kind of weird that Blake's parents seemed to be the only non-dysfunctional couple in the world, sometimes, but it was also weirdly comforting that such normal parents existed even if they weren't hers.

"We have something we wanted to give you," Ghira informed her, deep voice warm. "Not quite a Solstice present, but the day also seemed appropriate."

"Um... oh, geez, I don't have anything to give you guys, though," Kai said sheepishly, taking the leather tube that Ghira proffered her since it seemed less awkward than just leaving him standing there holding it.

"It's alright, Blake told us about how you're not from Remnant. That is, in fact, why we wanted to give you this," Ghira insisted. 

Curious, Kai opened the end of the tube and slid out the rolled-up paper inside. It looked very official, almost like a diploma or something, and the first thing that she really parsed and that made her heart do a flip-flop was the name 'Kai Sterling' written on it in calligraphy. The rest... she read the words, but somehow her brain couldn't quite accept what they seemed to be telling her.

"I... I don't understand."

"It's your citizenship, dear," Kali said warmly, clasping her hands together in front of her. "You're a citizen of Menagerie now."

She had never been a citizen of anything before.

She was a Guildcert, but that came from the old man, her license had been tied to his as his slave, and was probably on shaky ground now that she had been freed without going through the proper channels. She'd been a part of things, joined with things, like the Geneslicers, but it was never anything so... official and real as this.

It had her name on it.

Her full name.

Her person name.

"I don't know what to say," she admitted, her voice cracking a little.

Ghira stepped forward and hugged her. Then Kali did. "You don't have to say anything," Blake's mother assured her, patting her back gently. "We were happy to. After what you did for us, for her, and for Ilia, this is the very least we can do."

"We are proud to have you as the very first Human citizen of our Kingdom, Kai," Ghira added. "You will always have a home on Kuo Kuana waiting for you, when you want it."

She sniffled a little. Smiled. Said something she'd never called someone and meant it in the way it should be meant.

"Thank you, sir."

* * *

"By now I probably don't have to tell you how much that knowledge meant to someone who'd lived like I had.

"Home was people, for me, yeah. Home was Ilia, just then. Wherever Ilia was, and to a slightly lesser extent Team KACH, and Team RWBY and JNPR, they were my home.

"But having an entire  _ nation _ claim me... be willing to say that yes, she is ours, she belongs here... that was a hell of a thing.

"More than that, it felt like it solidified me as a person, and that that person was Kai Sterling. The idea of being Kai Sterling wasn't just a thing that existed in my head anymore. It was a thing that was filed in official government documents, that I held in my hand. When I set up the ID app on my scroll finally, it was the name beside my picture.

"Kai Sterling was real now. I was real.

"Blake's parents were some of the best people I ever met, and setting off to save the world felt like small thanks to give in return for what they'd given me."

* * *

"YAY KAI!"

"Gwah!" Kai thudded to the ground in a slight flurry of rose petals and with a smol on top of her. "Told you... no more... ballistic hugs..."

"But it's Solstice!" Ruby chirped, as if that excused everything, propping herself up and looking down at Kai with sparkling silver eyes.

As the two of them got up, the rest of RWBY and JNPR made their way over, smiling and calling holiday wishes. Kai noticed, in fact, that only one person was missing, and with a blink she glanced around. "Hey, anyone seen Grey?"

"He said he had something to do," Qrow rasped with a little shrug. "I'm gonna meet up with him to go prowling around later tonight, though, I'll give him all your Solstice wishes if you want."

"Huh, sure." Kai shrugged, then grinned as someone started ringing a bell. "Guess it's finally time, hell, I'm starved."

The meal was a strange blend of breakfast, lunch, and dinner all rolled into one... it seemed like whatever someone had felt like bringing, they'd brought it to add to the buffet, so Kai got to try just about every Kingdom's dishes, as well as a bunch of the major settlements. Reese was delighted to find that apparently there were a handful of other Baoula residents about, and after a rapidfire bout of talk with them in that thick, flowing drawl accent, she'd piled a plate almost entirely with jambalaya from the massive container of it and consumed it all in one sitting.

Kai afterward couldn't even really remember what they talked about at the table shared by their group and the Belladonnas. She knew there had been a lot of talk about the food, urging sharing, Ruby pestering Weiss to try multiple spicy things and the former heiress responding by threatening to steal and eat all of Ruby's cookies. She knew they'd talked endlessly, freely, that stories had been told, but it all sort of blended together into this big warm blob of pleasant.

She'd never had a holiday like this.

Dragontide was the only thing she had to compare it to. But even for worshipers of the Crystal Dragon, Dragontide wasn't much more than the massive festival and party that most of Makarzia celebrated it as. Sure, there was jumbana, a dish not  _ entirely _ unlike what Reese was having a second helping of (albeit with other things on her plate this time), that only actual adherents ate, but again that was just sort of an excuse to have something tasty, and Kai had often gone without because she didn't have the credits to scrape together to buy as much as a bowl.

Even the few times she'd gotten to actually party at Dragontide, she had just been one person in the sea of them. She'd celebrated it by herself, as had everyone else, pretty much. 

Solstice was, apparently, togetherness.

She kind of had to admit that just this moment, it had Dragontide beat.

'Maybe someday,' she thought with a smile as she looked down the table of her new friends. Her new family. 'Maybe someday I can get them to celebrate it here, and it won't be lonely this time."

Afterward, they retired to the house, Blake's parents begging off. The furniture in the living room was moved to allow for a long folding table to be set up and Ruby happily setting out game boxes that had either already been in the borrowed home's closet or that had been borrowed from Team ABRN's room. "Oh hey, we gotta do presents first though!" Ruby chirped.

"Uh." Kai winced a little.

"It's okay, it wasn't an obligation or anything this year," Yang quickly assured her with a pat on the shoulder, grinning. "A lot of us didn't, but a few did so hey."

"Here," Blake offered, setting down a stack of wrapped rectangles. "Yes, I admit it, I bought everyone books. But we've got a long train ride in the future, so you'll thank me later."

Kai sighed, grinning as she decided to just accept it, taking the package Blake offered her and unwrapping it. "'The Man With Two Souls'," she read aloud.

"It's one of my favorites," Blake assured her with a smile. "I hope you like it."

Kai tucked the book into her hoodie pocket thoughtfully as everyone else unwrapped theirs. She'd never been much of a reader, other than contracts, legal documents, and technical manuals. Not for any disdain of the idea, just that she had never been allowed to touch Doonian's books in the old Guildhall apartment, and there hadn't been any in the Makarzia apartment. She could have read on her comm, but buying books like that required credits which she usually didn't have to spare.

It was interesting to think that it was a hobby she might now be able to pick up.

"I got people stuff too!" Ruby chirped, zipping over to Kai and holding out a much more brightly-wrapped package. "Here here here hurry hurry hurry!"

"Okay, okay!" Kai said, laughing a bit as she unwrapped the box... and blinked at the front of it. "Uh, it's... a toy?"

Jaune gasped loudly, and was suddenly at her side, his fists clutched under his chin as his eyes widened almost impossible large and sparkled.  "That's no  _ toy _ , it's the  _ Fragment _ -class limited coloration Xanth Kaddax figure with  _ button-action rifle-whip _ , the only time they ever made it in that scale!" He leaned in closer, jaw slightly slack in awe. "A lost treasure of a decade past, seventy percent of the entire production run was scattered to the retail winds by a shipping error and you  _ found one _ ! I'm sooooo jealous!" he whimpered with a pout, dancing back and forth from foot to foot.

Okay that was cute.

"Heheh, yup yup yup," Ruby declared proudly, jutting her chest out and preening a bit. "He's one of the most famous Huntsmen in history, all his stuff sells out all the time, but I found him hiding behind five Braith Delaneys and an Esteban Royale in an old pharmacy! And he's alllll yours, Kai!"

"You, um..." Kai blinked, sort of distractedly opening the box and pulling out the articulated plastic person inside. "You bought me a toy."

"Oh, um." Ruby fiddled her fingers together, glancing down, enthusiasm having waned. "W-well, you know, you're a Huntress now, and I thought maybe you'd... get excited about learning a little more about the other famous ones that came before," she murmured.

"Most grown people don't get excited for action figures, Ruby," Weiss said, though her look between Kai and Ruby said she was starting to feel a little hurt.

"Oh! Um, no, no, sorry, it's not that, sorry," Kai said quickly, shaking her head. "I just... uh... no one ever gave me a toy before."

The room fell silent.

Glances were exchanged. It was Ren who finally spoke up, his normally even voice solemn and a little sad. "You... never had a toy?"

"I mean I was like fifteen or something when Doonian bought me, and I went directly into training with Niobe and Ico," Kai explained, shrugging a little absently. "Neither of them exactly had anything like a childhood either, so it probably never occurred to them that I'd want something like a toy. All the stuff I wanted was like... sodas I hadn't tried from vending machines, or a new knife or stuff like that. I mean I never really even thought about a toy."

The part of her that had always been in training to fight and kill was looking at the silly little thing in her hands, assessing it for potential uses in keeping her alive and finding none, and scoffing with contempt.

The rest of her was grinning like an idiot as she hit the button on the side of Xanth Kaddax's rifle to pop it into sections on a little string, making a soft "Pshoo~!" as she did.

"... Ruby," Weiss murmured, an arm settling around her partner's middle and head leaning against hers, a smile curling her lips as she watched. "The next time I tell you that toys aren't an appropriate gift, ignore me."

"Consider it done," Ruby replied happily, nuzzling her head a little against Weiss's.

"Ahem." Kai cleared her throat and tucked the toy into one of her dimensional pockets. The one on the inner chest. Totally not because it was the most secure and the one nearest to her heart, just because it was the one she used for stuff she didn't need very often. "Thanks, Ruby."

"There's one more thing, Kai." Silvia stepped forward, smiling as she lifted a small, slightly rounded wrapped box. "All of us chipped in a little towards having this made for you. Consider this your 'welcome to Remnant' present."

"Fucksakes, guys," Kai sighed, but she couldn't help smiling as she accepted it and unwrapped it, blinking a bit at the black velvet box. She flipped the top open, looking at the silver ring inside, the top engraved with a stylized lion's head capped by a three-tined crown.

"As we grow up, and especially those of us who intend to become Huntsmen, we typically craft an emblem we feel expresses ourselves in some way," Ren explained, smiling just slightly. "Something to represent us. Since you were unfamiliar with the practice, we took the liberty of helping out."

"The crowned lion is the symbol of sterling silver from pre-Remnant times," Blake added with a smile as Kai slid the ring onto her right ring finger. "Oh, it fits, good."

"Yeah," Kai whispered, tears shining in her eyes as she looked down at the ring.

Her first piece of jewelry too.

"Yeah. You guys have got me sized up pretty well."

* * *

"December first, 2992, Makarzian calendar. My first birthday.

"December twenty-fifth, 244 AGW, Remnant calendar. When I finally, really became a complete person."

* * *

It had been the best day of her life.

They had played a bunch of games, eaten again at some point until they were nearly sick, and then turned into furniture slugs and watched a movie projected from someone's scroll. Sometime during the movie Qrow had slipped out, presumably to meet up with Grey for their bar crawl.

Ilia, Reese, and Silvia departed a bit ahead of her, Kai lingering behind to thank everyone again, to give out a round of hugs where they seemed wanted, before making her own way out of the house and trotting down the stairs.

"Kai, wait!"

Kai stopped and turned as Weiss trotted after her. Both paused and looked up, realizing that it was just now beginning to snow, big fat flakes drifting down through the dark.

"Solstice snow... I guess that's sort of a big deal here," Weiss commented wryly, as if it wasn't exactly one to her.

"Yeah." Kai chuckled, eyes twinkling a little. "S'up?"

"Um. Listen, I had something I wanted to give you," Weiss said, glancing down at the thin wax paper box in her hand. "It's not really a Solstice present so much, but I got it this morning and then I felt silly because I knew we were all about to eat a huge meal, and then all day it was kind of embarrassing to give it to you in front of everyone, and..."

She trailed off, then huffed and shoved the box towards Kai. "Oh, just  _ here _ ."

Kai blinked, taking the box and opening it, then grinning. "Hey, fried bread."

"You went and got me hooked," Weiss grumbled as if deeply annoyed. "... But they really are great," she admitted with a sigh a moment later, bobbing her head. "And I'd never have known about them if it weren't for you, so. I guess... happy Solstice. Even if they're not hot anymore," she added just a little sheepishly.

"Thanks Weiss." Kai grinned, picking up one of the round, sugar-dusted treats and taking a bite... her eyes sparkling more. "Hey, the coffee frosting filled ones, I love these!"

"Yes, I noticed," Weiss scoffed, before turning and trotting back inside, apparently deciding that was the end of it. "Happy Solstice!" she added with the flit of a hand.

"Yeah, you too," Kai chuckled, tucking the bread between her teeth so she could close the box up.

* * *

"I didn't have a fucking chance in hell once I met her, did I?

"But. That was for later. I still had one more thing to do this Solstice. One thing to make the perfect day complete."

* * *

When Kai got back to the dorm, she was actually a little relieved to see Ilia waiting for her at the door. The smaller woman looked relieved at the sight of her and trotted down the steps. "Kai! I was wondering where you got to."

"Just fell behind, was having a snack," Kai assured her, not wanting to admit she'd eaten all four pieces of fried bread that Weiss had bought her all on her own. She glanced around at the snow, which was starting to stick to the ground. "Man, pretty night, huh?"

"Yeah, it is." Ilia smiled warmly as well.

Kai took out her scroll and glanced at the time. "Well. There's still about twenty minutes of Solstice left. Hey, c'mere," she said, giving a little toss of her head and turning to walk off.

"Huh? Okay." Confused but agreeable enough, Ilia followed her.

Kai didn't have a specific destination in mind, just somewhere nice and private, where they could be in the snow. Once she found it, she turned to Ilia. Regarded her for a moment. "... A couple of years back, I was on an Earth on a job at about this time of year."

"Oh yeah?" Ilia perked up, sending a multiverse story in the offing no doubt. She and Ruby were usually the ones to pester Kai for those the most.

"Yeah, they've got their own holiday for it. Something about a fat guy in a red suit, bunch of deer, whatever." Kai shrugged, then went on. "It was this little town and the job was done, and I didn't really want to go back yet, so I decided to kill a little time. Wandered around, found this run-down bar that was open, settled in to have a drink.

"So I'm sitting there, and they've got what had to be a practically antique viewscreen even for when I was there up in the corner, and it's playing this movie. It's kinda saccharine and goofy and it's not even in color, and it's really just getting on my nerves." Kai couldn't help but smile. "Kind of like the time I walked into this ancient blast bunker and there was this crinkle-nosed speckled girl looking at me with disdain."

Ilia glanced down abashedly, but looked up again as Kai continued. "Except then the lead character starts singing. And... I dunno, even though the song didn't really  _ mean _ anything to me, for some reason it hit me a certain way. I was sitting there in this run-down bar on a world that wasn't mine, listening to this goofy song, but... all of a sudden for the first time in years I almost felt like I wanted to cry."

Ilia blinked repeatedly. "What song was it?"

"Well. That's the thing." Kai grinned sheepishly herself and looked down. "I guess I've been thinking about all this Solstice thing all day, all the gift-giving and family, and... I need to give at least one Solstice gift. So... what I'm about to do is only for you and me. Ever. A song that no one else on Remnant will ever hear. A special gift... from sister to sister."

And as Ilia's eyes widened at the unsaid thing finally being said, Kai closed her eyes, summoned her courage, and began to sing. She knew she wasn't great at it... but this had more feeling in it than anything she'd ever done.

" _ Somewhere over the rainbow _

_ Way up high _

_ There's a land that I heard of _

_ Once in a lullabye" _

Ilia, if anything, seemed completely stunned, snowflakes starting to gather in her hair and on the shoulders of her coat as Kai's soft voice carried through the crisp, cold night.

" _ Somewhere over the rainbow _

_ Skies are blue _

_ And the dreams that you dare to dream _

_ Really do come true _ "

Kai opened her eyes, lifting her head and smiling at Ilia now, seeing the tears glistening in those pretty blue eyes, feeling her own tears start to slip free.

" _ Someday I'll wish upon a star _

_ And wake up where the clouds are far _

_ Behind me _

_ Where troubles melt like lemondrops _

_ Away above the chimneytops _

_ That's where you'll find me _ "

Kai gently let go of Ilia's hands, instead bringing her hands up to her sister's cheeks, brushing her thumbs across the damp trails the happy, touched tears had left.

" _ Somewhere over the rainbow _

_ Bluebirds fly _

_ Birds fly over the rainbow _

_ Why then, oh why can't I? _ " Kai leaned her forehead forward, placing it against Ilia's just as they had been when their souls were bound together. "I love you, Rainbow. Happy Solstice."

"Kai," Ilia sobbed, throwing herself forward and hugging her sister as tightly as she could.


	31. Chapter 22

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Grey delivers justice for Solstice.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As a note, this one deals with Grey's past, and if you remember what's been discussed about that, you'll know it's a little rough.

December 25, 244 AGW, 11:44 PM (Remnant 4482)

Qrow Branwen made his way through the back alleys and dark streets of the bad part of Mistral. It wasn't exactly the sort of place you wanted to just amble along, hands in your pockets... if you weren't also displaying a massive transforming weapon on your back. And if you hadn't already been in these neighborhoods often enough to be recognizable as someone capable of doing great violence on anyone that tried something.

He stopped and glanced up as it started snowing. Solstice snow... he wondered when the last time he'd been excited about that.

He knew, though, if he even thought about it for a moment. Because he remembered the first time he'd been excited about it.

She'd roused them all out of bed when it was still dark, excited, practically shaking with glee, hauled them all to the window in the common room in their pajamas. She'd pointed out the window at the flakes... small and a bit damp-looking, but very much snow. There was already snow on the ground, after all, it was Vale, but this was  _ Solstice _ snow and it was very, very important.

Taiyang had smiled easily, grinning and leaning against the sill of the closed window, looking out with those pretty blue eyes, warm with fond Solstice memories, no doubt. 

Raven had scoffed, rolled her eyes, looked like she was borderline angry about the whole thing. But as she'd stood there watching, as Summer just continued to stare out with that bright smile and silver eyes full of pure joy, she'd relaxed, and finally leaned against the sill as well beside Taiyang, their arms brushing together. She even smiled, a little.

Qrow had had a hard time taking his eyes off of Summer long enough to watch the snow. But every year after that, he always looked forward to it. Until...

He raised a hand, palm up, to catch one of the flakes. A tiny huff of wind blew it away at the last minute, drifting it off somewhere away from him.

Just his luck.

He turned some, tucking the hand back into his pocket as Grey prowled out of the shadows. "Ready to do this?"

Qrow nodded once. "You found him?" he rasped.

"Yeah." The steel-eyed man turned and strode off into another back alley, Qrow falling into step beside him.

"Kai asked about you, by the way. Everyone sent Solstice greetings."

"... Mm."

They didn't speak further as both navigated the dark pathways of the parts of Mistral that the good parts wanted to forget existed.

This was a place where the darkness that lived in human hearts dwelled. It wasn't a nice, clean, tangible evil like the Grimm, but rather a potential that was in every human soul. That many found more repugnant for the fact that they realized that potential was somewhere inside them as well, made them deny it, and wind up denying its existence. So here it festered... uncleaned, unexamined, because most would rather let it be and let it grow than have to face what it was and what it meant.

It was deep into this place that Qrow and Grey ventured on their hunt.

They watched from the dark of an alley as an older man in a red scarf and coat of such obvious quality that they were practically 'asking for it' in this neighborhood emerged from a building and turned to lock up the door. Except anyone who dressed like that and owned a building in this area was such a big shot that everyone knew to leave them alone.

They watched in silence as he pulled on supple leather gloves, patted his arms, and turned to walk down the sidewalk.

"That him?" Qrow murmured.

Grew nodded, once.

"Alright. I'll take care of it. You do what you need to do."

Grey nodded again and prowled forward. A faint flex of Aura into his feet muffled the already light tred of his feet... a focusing of the concept of 'stealth' into something near physical. It wasn't until a gust of wind through the snowy air made his coat billow a little that the red-clad man started a little and turned.

And just like that, Grey was on him. The clicking of Hell Ticket's variable panels sliding out and forming into claws sheathing his hands happened in near-perfect sync with him diving in, grabbing the man by the throat and hefting him up, swinging him around through the air before slamming him back against a wall.

"You're crazy!" the man tried to splutter, kicking his feet a little, both hands gripping Grey's arm tightly. "You're crazy, do you know who I am?!"

"Oh, I know exactly who you are, Radcliff," Grey replied flatly, steel-colored eyes flashing. "I remember you  _ intimately _ ."

"... Grey?" the red-clad man whispered, brown eyes widening.

"Mhmm. I understand the momentary confusion... my makeup game isn't quite as on-point these days, is it?" Grey raised his eyebrow and tilted his head a little. "You must be so sad, it was so important to you that I keep it nice all the time."

"Grey... Grey, listen," Radcliff gasped, his only motions now trembling as he saw the wicked-looking weapon on the man's other hand as it raised. "Grey, you took the job, you  _ took the job _ !"

"I was  **thirteen** !" Grey snarled, eyes flashing, Grey Bloody Claws starting to bleed back into his face. "I was a stupid little kid who'd never been off of Kuo Kuana and you lured me away from everything I knew, kept me away from ways to contact anyone I could ask for help, medicated me when I cried or got upset, all for a bunch of humans with a fetish to  _ use _ !"

"Grey... Grey... I... we can talk about it, r-right? About making up for what I did to you," Radcliff pleaded.

"... Yeah. See, that's the problem, Radcliff." Grey's expression went cold now. "Because what I'm about to do, it's not for me. It's for Hinto. Atami. Galathe."

At the name of each boy that had died in his service while Grey had been there, a little of the desperate hope fled from Radcliff's eyes, replaced by sheer terror.

"Oh, and of course, Cham. You remember Cham, don't you?" Grey added, his voice having gone almost totally emotionless now. "What was it you told the client? 'Be careful with that one, he's too pretty to spoil, but you can do as you like with the other, sir.'"

"Oh Brothers," Radcliff gasped, closing his eyes.

"Yeah. Pray. You're gonna need someone looking out for you where you're going."

Radcliff yelped as he was tossed bodily across the lobby and slammed against the front of the desk before dropping to the floor, the Mistralian police department desk officer jumping up in shock.

"Qrow Branwen, licensed Huntsman," Qrow rasped, holding up his ID as he walked forward with Grey at his side. He thumped down a tall stack of leather-bound ledgers. "I have extensive evidence this man has been operating a prostitution and drug ring utilizing underage Faunus."

As the office began to buzz with chatter, Grey squatted down, staring into Radcliff's eyes as he rested his forearms on his knees.

"Your Solstice present is your life. And if I were you, I'd consider pleading guilty and  _ not _ asking for a single bit of lenience. Because if you ever, ever, ever get out of prison, Radcliff, for any reason..." Grey's steel-colored eyes flashed. "I will be  _ right there _ waiting for you."

"Thank you. For helping me with this," Grey said evenly as he and Qrow made their way back down the steps of the police station. "I owe you one."

"Do ya? Way I see it, your info let me take a major scumbag off the streets and hopefully leads to a bunch of kids getting saved. Feels kind of more like I owe  _ you _ one," Qrow scoffed. Then he raised his eyebrows. "Interesting choice, y'know. Not just leaving him in pieces on the sidewalk. Doubt much of anyone would have given it a second thought, considering what he was."

Grey was silent for a moment, then snorted and shook his head. "Maybe I just want him tossed into the general population in a prison full of very big, very angry Faunus."

"Yeah. M'sure that's what it is," Qrow said, one corner of his mouth quirking up.

"... Thanks again," Grey said, bobbing his head once before turning to walk off.

"Hey. Grey."

Grey turned back, blinking a bit in surprise and snapping his hands up to the pack of high-end cigarettes that thumped him in the chest.

"Happy Solstice," Qrow added with a flip of his hand through the air as he walked off.

"... Yeah. You too."

Grey turned the pack over in his hands for a few moments, then opened it and pulled one out. The flick of his lighter was a brief flash of light in the night, replaced by a warm coal ember as he drew on it.

'Yup,' he thought as he drew it up between two fingers and eyed it. 'This isn't half bad.'


	32. Interlude 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Remnant is a Death World but quite nice actually.

"Remnant is classified as a Death World in the Guild database. That means it's considered innately hostile to sentient life in such a way that your survival is tenuous the moment you set foot there.

"I guess it was a little weird that I was so happy there.

"Solstice wasn't just the happiest day of my life up to that point, those two weeks we spent at Haven were the happiest I'd known. We all trained together every day, but though we tried to take it seriously, everyone was having a good time. 

"It was almost more play than training, like we were all a bunch of... well, as Reese's partner would have put it, like a bunch of lion cubs learning to hunt. I know the big lion of our little pride got frustrated sometimes, but he seemed to be enjoying himself too.

"In between training, sometimes we helped out with Grimm extermination or other things that needed doing. Too, Ilia and I actually did get to that recruiting that Niobe had asked us. We talked to people, mostly Faunus, some not, who seemed like they were looking for a change. We may have talked to a few White Fang members who had been laying low and now found it highly attractive to go very, very far away, but hey, Niobe wasn't running a flower arrangement class over there.

"Like we'd been told, we didn't blow smoke up their asses, we made it clear it was a dangerous, rough place where bad stuff was brewing, but we also told them about the good parts of Makarzia. 'No Grimm' was a big one. But also how it was beautiful in its own way, how it could be free and wild, that there was a lot of opportunity to match ambition, that there was a big population of people just like them on the other side, that even outside of Tailtown, prejudice was more a personal failing than a societal problem.

"It was weirdly easy to make Makarzia sound good, when I tried. Maybe that should have been my first clue that I wasn't as done with it as I thought.

"Not a huge number but a fair number of people accepted. 'No Grimm' was apparently a pretty big selling point, once we convinced them we were for real. We ran out of premade beacons and I had to borrow Reese's tools and beg some parts to make new ones that ran on Dust. I could have asked Reese to make them, I guess, and gotten it done a lot faster, but as much as I loved her, somehow handing Reese Chloris the blueprints to dimensional travel seemed like it was just asking for trouble.

"Oh, yeah, there was kind of a big to-do in the second week. Apparently some complete asshole flesh peddler got busted and a bunch of Faunus kids he'd been abusing were rescued. I think between that and the Menagerie Militia coming to save Haven, things started to change a little. I dunno, maybe I was just being optimistic... which would be a fucking first... but it seemed like the people in Mistral were looking at the Faunus a little differently. Maybe there was a bit more of that Solstice spirit or something in the air.

"Anyway. 'Hanging out with friends' wasn't something I'd ever gotten to experience in my life, but we did. Together as a big group, or just as teams, or sometimes in little clumps of us that we'd just randomly assembled. We'd hang around watching movies, eat lunch, play games. All that simple, easy life I'd never had before.

"Weirdly, it seemed like some of the others were as surprised and relieved to be doing it as I was. I started to get the feeling that the idea that they needed to save the world had been weighing on them, pressing them down, making them feel like they had to be serious and on-task the whole time. But in the process of trying to show me and the twins the good times we'd been denied, they rediscovered they needed those good times too.

"I admit, I was a little sad to know that the time was almost over. Aaaand then I kind of went and did a thing on the last night that I still get just a little embarrassed about."


	33. Chapter 23

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Kai shows Sun Wukong quite a bit of gratitude.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaaand here we go with some actual smut.

January 5, 244 AGW, 9:44 PM (Remnant 4482)

"To saving the worrrrrrld!" Sun Wukong called cheerfully, raising his glass in an overelaborate toast. 

"Keep your voice down!" Weiss hissed, trying to push his arm down as if that might put some cat back in the bag.

"Oh, c'mon, they don't know what I'm talkin' about," Sun assured her easily, grinning.

" _ You _ don't know what you're talking about," his partner Neptune pointed out.

"Oh, yeah, that's right. ...  _ Hey _ ," Sun said with a frown, glancing around the rest of the table.

Silvia snorted. "Give it a rest, Sun, they've already said that no one who's not going gets to hear about it like a million times."

"And we're heading to Vacuo.  _ Apparently _ ," Sun's teammate Scarlet muttered, giving the flap of red bangs across his face an annoyed flip.

"You  _ agreed _ to go to Vacuo," Sun corrected, gesturing up-and-down with one finger. "We talked about it."

"... That's right, we did," Scarlet allowed after a moment, bobbing his head to one side. "Which I'm still having a little difficulty believing, that you actually talked to us and got us all to agree instead of just informing us we were going and shooing us out the door."

"Her fault," Sun chirped, indicating Blake with a point of his tail. "Or she gets the credit or however that goes."

"Talking is... rough, sometimes," Blake allowed with a slightly sheepish expression, spreading her hands a little on the tabletop. "But it's better not to run from it. I just... told Sun how helpful it's been to talk about things with everyone else, and he listened. Which, I guess, proves the point."

"So yeah, I'm gonna talk to you guys before I go running off and doing stuff on my own anymore," Sun said, putting a hand to his chest and bowing forward some over the tabletop.

"I notice you don't say you're going to talk to us  _ instead _ of going off on your own, just before," the red-haired man muttered with a sigh.

"Oh wow you noticed that? Dang, I thought I was being sneaky."

Kai laughed, raising her beer glass in a toast. "Hey, we'll be thinking of you guys when we're freezing our fun bits off in the tundra. Kudos."

"Hey. Sun."

"Hm?" Sun stopped and turned as they arrived back at the Haven dorm building. "Yeah, Kai, what is it?"

"C'mere, wanna talk to you about something," she replied, beckoning him as she turned and went down a different hall.

"Oooookay," he said in confusion, frowning just a little as he trotted after her. "Why are we headed into the second year dorm? Aaaand why are you trying doors?"

"Becaaause," Kai murmured, grinning as she found one unlocked and pushed the door open. The inside was actually entirely generic, indicating that its residents might have moved out entirely. 'Perfect.' "I realized that I never really thanked you for saving me from that Ursa."

"Hm? Oh, that was no big, and we were all kinda busy, so s'fine if you didn't say... um..." Sun's eyes widened as Kai approached, not stopping as she pressed against him and nudged him back up against the wall, red eyes sparkling at him. "... Ohhhhh."

"Mhmmm," Kai purred, leaning up to press her lips to his.

It was easy to tell from the way he tensed that for all his confidence, this probably wasn't an arena he had a lot of, if any, experience in. But his hands came up to rest on her sides after a second and drew her in, and he kissed her back very quickly.

He seemed to be a fast learner. That was very good.

Kai's fingers found his belt, tugged it open, undid his jeans. He was already mostly hard even before she wrapped a hand around him, started stroking lightly. Yeah, probably pretty new to this, so best not  _ too _ much stimulation...

... but a little. A little was good. And the way he gasped and moaned softly and very sincerely into her mouth was very nice.

She slid the pants down, going slow to make sure his tail had time to slip free, letting her hands wander back up his sides, along his chest, trace the toned lines of muscle, before brushing the shirt off his shoulders. He took just a bit longer to find the confidence to raise his hands and draw off her coat.

Kai went ahead and pulled off her own top rather than making him figure out how to approach that, her breasts jiggling a little as they dropped free. She might not be a Yang but she was almost a Blake, in that department at least. Just to make sure he got the idea, she took his hands and slid them up her own belly, helped guide him into covering them, before she kissed him again.

She could tell he was trying to be gentle as he squeezed her breasts, stroked his hands over them, and she wanted to tell him he really didn't need to, but that seemed like it might break the mood a little. Besides he was getting better at kissing all the time, his tongue very responsive, but he was definitely letting her take the lead. Hm, more than inexperience, maybe it was...

"Um, hey," Sun murmured very softly as he broke the kiss, shuddering gently again and letting out a soft gasp as Kai wrapped her hand around his cock and gave it another slow stroke. "Could you, uh... could you tell me what to do?"

Kai grinned. Wickedly.

"Here." She drew back and snagged him by the hand, leading him over towards the nearest bed and nudging him down onto it. She took a second to peel out of her pants, then crawled up across him, on top of him, dipping her head down to kiss along his chest and collarbone as she did. She saw him shiver as she kissed his throat, and that was very, very nice indeed.

"Now," she murmured, continuing to move forward, until she was straddling his head, looking down at those heated blue eyes, at how he was gazing up at her almost worshipfully, at how he was torn between staring at her pussy right above his lips and her face gazing down at him. "There is a  _ lot _ to be said about this particular thing. But I'm gonna give you a guideline that I think is riiiight up your alley, Sun Wukong."

She lowered herself, bit by bit, enjoying the flickers through his eyes as she did. "Juuust pay attention to me. To the sounds I make... to the way I move... be impulsive, and intuitive... and try to make me scream," she added in a soft, smug tone as she finally settled her lower lips against his upper ones.

Obviously that didn't lead to a particularly great thing immediately... just some slow, testing laps, strokes of his tongue over her, Kai just shifting a little and giving some soft, vague noises low in her throat.

But Sun was all about the intuitive, impulsive action. 

Every time he found a little noise in her throat he went after that spot, urging out a moan instead. Soon his tongue was rolling in quick, steady strokes, making her breath catch in her throat and her hips buck, her back arching here and there.

"Mmmf... nnnh, fuck," Kai groaned, gripping a handful of his hair in one hand, the other leaned back against his chest. She cheated just the tiniest bit, tightening her grip on his hair and guiding him a bit forward, and then the strokes of his tongue started carrying across her clit. "Mmmmf fuuuuuck yes, fuck, Sun, you feel it, right there," she half-whimpered, biting her lower lip and closing her eyes as she worked her hips down on him. "Yes, baby, right there, mmnh, yes..."

His hands came up, stroked over her lower back, caressed over the curves of her ass. Kai was actually quite proud of her ass, and when he squeezed it and started guiding her just the tiniest bit in her grinding on his face she liked it even better.

"Yes, baby, c'mon, make me cum, c'mon, yes, yes yes yes," Kai urged, her voice growing both more whisper-like and higher as he brought her closer. Every little push of his tongue that parted her folds, slid a little inside her before flitting over her clit, brought her a little bit closer, until she gave a sweet yowl and jerked her hips forward against him, a pleasant all-over shudder running through her.

Panting for a moment, Kai didn't hesitate long in sliding off of him, shifting to the side on the bed, leaning down to kiss him hot and deep, tasting herself all over his tongue. 'You are such a good boy and the girls are going to be very lucky when you've got more experience under your belt,' she thought smugly.

She kissed her way back down his chest and belly, enjoying the slight shudder of his quickened breathing and the catches in it as she got closer. She turned her head, kissed at the top of his shaft, dragged her lips along it, flicked her tongue, actually drew something like a whimper out of him as she kissed along the edges of the head.

She wasn't terribly surprised when he came almost the moment she enclosed the head with her mouth. It was obviously his first time and she'd worked him up pretty good, so she just swirled her tongue around the head, feeling his load roll thick and slippery across and around her tongue before she swallowed it down with the head still in her mouth.

He hadn't gone soft a bit, which was half the reason she'd done it.

Raising her head, she grinned at him. "You want me to be on top right?" She couldn't help but laugh a bit when he nodded particularly eagerly.

As she nudged him to lay back on the bed, he did get a flash of a worried look on his face. "Uh, do we need a, uh, y'know...?"

"I think I've got some somewhere," Kai answered with a glance at her coat as she moved up, enjoying the low sound he made as she settled her wet, hot pussy onto his balls gently. "If you're worried about getting sick. But I do a blood test pretty regularly and I've got an implant that takes care of the other thing, so."

"Welp, good enough for me," he replied with a grin, simian tail waggling happily to one side of him.

The grin was cute so she leaned down and kissed it, kept kissing him as she shifted her hips forward. A reach down, a bit of very practiced nudging, and she slid herself down on him, feeling him spread her open very nicely... he wasn't necessarily hung like a horse Faunus (oops, was that racist?) but his bang-bang staff was actually very nice. And the sounds he made into the kiss as he felt her pussy engulfing him were very nice.

Fully down on him, she sat up and started moving her hips. She was pretty practiced at this herself, enough that she could generally bring a guy off very quickly. Buuuut she wanted to make this last a bit, so she kept her pace steady, slow, and even, resting her hands on his belly and letting her arms frame her tits, presenting them a bit for him. 

Then she gave a yelp as something soft brushed up her spine, making her arch a little and clench around him.

'Oh you're a  _ bad _ boy after all,' she thought happily as she looked down at him, seeing his grin as the tip of his tail continued brushing up and down her spine. It was just  _ almost _ distractingly ticklish, but the way it was inspiring her to squirm was actually a whole lot of fun. For her, and to judge from the shifts and light rolls of his own hips, for him too. 

His hands stroked her hips, slid over them without urging her, letting her move on her own pace save for whatever his tail urged out of her. Moaning softly and sweetly, Kai raised her hands, brushed her hair back entirely over her shoulders and rested her hands on the back of her neck. Let her back arch, showing off for him, was gratified when he slid his hands up to her breasts. She rolled herself against him, rubbing stiff nipples against his fingers as she started moving her hips a bit more urgently.

It was his second time so he held out a good long while, and this time when he came she wasn't far behind him. She had to admit, knowing she had been his first was part of what brought her over, a little bit of selfish in claiming him, making a little bit of him hers forever. It had her giving a high, sweet cry that was more an exhalation of breath as anything as she squeezed around him, her hips giving one last buck as a shiver ran through her.

She half-fell on top of him, less because she was tired and more because she just really wanted to feel his body warm on hers at the moment, wanted to kiss him again, feel his arms slide around her and pull her close, which was exactly what he did.

As the kiss broke, Sun grinned at her. "I definitely feel the gratitude."

She laughed, kissed his chin. "Yeah?"

"Mhm."

* * *

"So, um. Yes. That was a thing.

"Eheh.

"Nooooot necessarily my finest moment. Like, I'm not ashamed I slept with Sun, but the casual sex for a casual reason wasn't necessarily the sort of life I was trying to build, especially not when it was with a friend that I knew was still harboring feelings for one of our other friends.

"On the other hand, I hadn't been with anyone since I'd gotten free. There were definitely genemods and others in the Slicers I found hot, but I was always exhausted from patrols or fights, there wasn't really time or energy for that stuff.

"So in a way I wasn't just Sun's first, he was mine. My first as a free person. More than that, my first honestly  _ good _ man. They hadn't always been bad ones, but he was the first good one.

"Maybe that was why. I saw an opportunity to make sure that my first time once I wasn't a slave anymore was with someone good, and kind, and caring. Plus I think I had some idea that Sun would understand it was just a casual thing... just a friend thing, and wouldn't make too big of a deal of it.

"Vacuan to the bone. Understanding that some things were moments to be seized, and then let to drift away, remembered fondly and that was that.

"I probably didn't do the  _ best _ job teaching him, I didn't give him exhaustive instruction or anything, but I hope that I gave him some good pointers. And I hoped he'd remember his first time well. More than anything that'd probably be the only thing that shamed me, if he ever regretted me being his first time.

"But I like to think he didn't. He smiled at me and the way he looked at me in the afterglow as we kissed and stroked and made each other laugh said he still respected me.

"Maybe that was a first too. A man that respected me. I respected the hell out of him, that was for sure.

"Thank you, Sun."


	34. Chapter 24

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the Grimm somehow manage to get even more terrifying and then Kai gets in touch with nature.

January 6, 244 AGW, 10:11 AM (Remnant 4482)

"So you guys take care of yourselves, right?"

Kai was relieved it wasn't awkward between them as she and Sun hugged at the train station. Actually the hug between Sun and Blake looked slightly more awkward, but then Blake being affectionate in public was always a little awkward.

Kai turned to Silvia, smiling a little sadly. "Well. I promised I'd be there for you from now on, but... here I go leaving. Sorry... looks like I'm breaking my promise."

"You're not." Silvia shook her head, long platinum ponytail waggling a bit. She smiled and reached out to take the redhead's hands in hers. "I may not know the details, but I understand you're doing this for me, for all of us. And you were there for me when I needed you most, to wake me up from the nightmare... thank you." She leaned forward and up to peck Kai's cheek. "Besides, it's not like I'm going to be alone."

"Does seem like a fair bit of the Faunus militia is going to be sticking around," Kai allowed with a nod.

"No, I don't mean that." Silvia took a step back, smiling more as she settled between Sun and Neptune. "I've decided that I'm going to Vacuo with Sun and his team. I want to be a Huntress... I'm not going to be content with just stepping away from the hate. I'm going to stand between the innocent and evil. Because you showed me that even though it hurts, we stand up to the pain, and we share it." Her blue eyes shone a little as she added softly, "And it doesn't hurt so much anymore."

"Yeah," was all Kai could manage through the tightening in her throat.

Ilia stepped forward to hug her twin tightly, whispering a quiet 'I love you' to her before stepping back to rejoin the others. 

"Please take good care of her," Blake said to Sun, giving a slightly wan smile.

"Hey, I'll treat her like family!" Sun declared, resting a hand atop Silvia's head. "Family that stabbed me and almost killed me!"

Silvia's specks turned a red-shaded pink of embarrassment. "I _said_ I was _sorry_!" 

"Heeey don't worry about it, I'm used to that level of hostility from family," Sun assured her breezily. "I'll introduce you to my cousin Starr, she'll be super jealous of you for actually getting to do what she's probably wanted to for years."

As they rejoined the rest of the group, Kai thought Oscar was acting a little oddly... until a turn of the head made her realize it was Ozma, just acting unusually nervous. Once the whole group was assembled, he cleared his throat, but kept his voice down.

"Before we depart, I must tell you something. This," he murmured, indicating the faintly glowing blue and gold lamp clipped to his belt. "Attracts Grimm almost as much as negative emotions do."

"What?" Qrow hissed. "Dammit, Oz, we can't take that thing on the train, then! We'll be putting all those people at risk!"

"I do not see that we have much choice, Qrow," Ozma answered a bit, well, grimly. "Traveling overland would take far too long, and even we would certainly be overwhelmed by Grimm attacks before then. Our only hope is that the Argus Express arrives in Argus before a large number of Grimm are drawn to us."

Then the body slumped, posture becoming less rigid, Oscar blinking a few times. "Uhhhh... I guess that's all he had to say." He sighs a little. "I think he's leaving it up to us."

"Nnnnh." Qrow rubbed his face, then sighed. "Unfortunately I really don't see much other option. It's like he said, traveling to Argus by ourselves would be borderline impossible, especially with winter setting in."

"Maybe we could try to make everyone feel more comfortable or something, try to offset any negative feelings?" Ruby ventured tentatively.

"No need to worry, friends!"

They all blinked and looked over as a pair of tall, fairly broad men, one fair, clean-shaven, and resting a large spiked mace on his shoulder, the other tan, with a soul patch, and shouldering a rifle swaggered up. They even had their swaggering poses and smirks synced up, to the point of both having their hips jutted slightly out by the same amount to present their crotches suggestively. "Everyone can feel safe and comfortable on the Argus Express thanks to us! Dee and Dudley, the Argus Express's very own, very personal Huntsmen, are here to make sure nobody needs to worry about a Grimm attack!"

"Oh really?" Qrow said flatly.

"Of course! And for a tip, we're available to provide _personalized_ defense, if you understand me," the one with the mace... probably Dee, Kai guessed... said with an exaggerated wink.

"This is what passes for a Huntsman outside of you guys?" Kai said flatly.

"Hey!" Dee spluttered. "I'll have you know we're-!"

"Fully licensed Huntsmen, yeah?" Qrow rasped, holding up his own scroll with his license displayed.

"Hey," Yang spoke up with a grin, lifting her hand a bit from having her arms folded and pointing. "You guys might wanna go close that door you left gaping open when you saw a bunch of cute girls coming, huh?"

Both men's heads whipped from staring at Qrow's license to staring at the caboose of the train, Dudley spluttering a bit before shouting, "I didn't do it!" Dee winced, looking like he'd like to call his partner an idiot, but feels like too much of one himself after getting called out by one of said cute girls, just stalking back off towards the door.

Once aboard the train and underway, everyone dispersed to their cabins or just to hang out. With Reese busily looking over the train's publicly-available information terminal and Grey chatting up a cute woman with horns in the bar car, Kai decided to park herself in Team RWBY's car, finding a spot near the luggage rack to sit and fiddle with her scroll, Ilia settled beside her and leaning against her side.

"Hey! Teambuilding exercise!" Ruby declared, sitting up on the side of one of the top bunks. "Video gaaaaames!"

Yang snorted, hopping down from her own bunk. "I'll get my scroll."

"Bring my other book back with you when you come, would you?" Blake asked without looking up from her current one. 

"Sure. But c'mon, Blakey, play too, huh?"

Blake rolled her eyes, then grinned and tucked a receipt into her paperback, sitting up fully. "Alright."

"Runningun, two player teams?" Ilia suggested as she took out her own scroll.

"Weiiiiissss!" Ruby instantly whined.

"Ugh, _fine_."

They played for almost an hour before Weiss suddenly threw down her scroll and pointed accusingly at Kai and Ilia. "They're _cheating_!"

"We are _not_ !" Ilia shot back, poking out her tongue. For some reason Kai's brain filled in a little _pekoo_ sound to go with it.

"You _do_ have incredibly good teamwork," Blake noted. "Even better than Weiss and Ruby, even though Weiss is actually the biggest gamer nerd here once she gets started."

"Hey!"

Kai and Ilia exchanged a glance, before the redhead shrugged and looked back over at the others. "We have psycomms."

"Psy... whats?" Yang said with a blink.

"They're a kind of implant, they let you direct your thoughts as a very specific band of communication, so you can basically communicate by thinking. Ilia and I are just used to using them. She's got the better one, she's a hub," Kai added, tilting her head to her partner.

"They replaced a _vertebrae_ ," Ilia declared, eyes widening dramatically.

"Whoa, seriously?" Yang's own eyes widened a little.

"Yeah and it _itches_!"

Kai snorted. "It does not."

"It _does_!"

"That... sounds incredibly useful," Weiss admitted. "Do you think it would be possible for the rest of us to get those?"

Kai considered that carefully. After a moment she nodded slowly. "Grey usually has a couple of guest passes on him. Once we get to Argus, we'll talk to him, see if he could go to the Guildhall to pick up some and bring back. But you need hubs to extend range and make them really effective... probably someone from each team would have to go with him, which isn't really a problem, Grey usually has some guest passes on him."

There was a bit of silence at that. Then Yang shrugged. "I'll go, yeah."

"Yang, are you sure?" Weiss asked with a frown. When the blonde tossed her a look she huffed. "I'd ask _anybody_ that!"

"Yeah, it's fine. I have the most practice with anything like a cybernetic implant, and besides, I'm used to surgeries," she said with a bit of a scoff, Blake getting a slightly pained look in her eyes.

"It'll be a Guildhall surgeon so you'll probably not even feel like you got cut on," Kai noted with a small snort.

"Oh yeah, that'll be cool too, I'll get to see this Guildhall place you've mentioned," Yang added, perking up.

"Brace yourself for some culture shock when you come out of the portal."

"Huh? What's that?"

"You won't like it," Blake muttered, ears laying down a little.

Eventually everyone retired to their team rooms, sacking out in the bunk beds and sleeping through the steady clatter of the train across its tracks. It was a four day trip to Argus, so when they got up in the morning there was little on their minds other than hoping that it would be a similarly uneventful day as yesterday.

Spotting Weiss sitting in the dining car already as she walked in, Kai made her way over and flopped down, grinning as the white-haired woman redirected her scowl from the menu to her. "No fried bread on the menu?"

"That is _not_ what I was looking for," Weiss said primly, in a way that indicated it was in fact exactly what she had been looking for.

"Hey. Caff. ... Sorry, coffee," Kai amended to the waiter as he approached. She looked back at Weiss and shrugged. "Old habits."

"Did you drink a lot of coffee? You know, on... Makarzia, wasn't it?"

"Yeah, but it never really got above 'tolerable'. At least any of the stuff I could get my hands on," the redhead amended.

"Why? No places to grow beans?"

"Nah, hydroponics megaspires took care of all of that, plants of any kind aren't actually a problem on Makarzia. It's the water." Kai shrugged. "The pipes haven't been replaced or really serviced in centuries. You've gotta boil or filter all the water before you use it, and even then... well. If you've ever noticed I'm not in the habit of ordering water, but whenever I get it free I then seem really grateful when I see it?"

As if to illustrate, the waiter returned with a mug of coffee and glass of ice water. "Bless," Kai said simply and sincerely, immediately picking up the water glass and taking a gulp.

Weiss wrinkled her nose. "Can't you collect rainwater or something then?"

"The rain is _so_ much worse," Kai scoffed. "It never snows on Makarzia because because the outdoor water has so many chemicals in it that it won't freeze."

A pinched look came around Weiss's eyes. "I've certainly had enough of snow, but that sounds awful."

"Yeah... you haven't exactly made a secret that you're not happy about going back to Atlas," Kai allowed, bobbing her head.

"I just..." Weiss looked away, out the window. "... I know I'm stronger now," she said quietly. "I know I'm better now. But I still can't help but be afraid that the first time I see my father, I'll just crumple and obey him. And that he'll take me away again."

"... Not gonna happen," Kai said evenly, reaching out to lay a hand atop one of the other woman's, staring her earnestly in the eye. "That _won't_ happen, Weiss. First of all because you're right, you're too damn strong for it. Second of all because none of the rest of us are going to let it happen. Even if he somehow got you back into that house, I guarantee you that within an hour the front door would be flying off its hinges and I would be coming in there shooting bitches. Okay?"

Weiss blinked.

Then laughed.

"You are... _so_ profane!" And then she smiled gently. "And really sweet. Thank you."

"What _is_ it with you guys and swearing, anyway?" Kai asked, rolling her eyes and settling back.

"Soldiers swear," Weiss said simply.

Kai rolled her eyes. "Hell yeah they do, but so?"

Weiss seemed to be trying to figure out how best to put her thoughts together. "... After the Great War," she began slowly. "All of Remnant came together in cooperation. At least on the surface. There were a lot of inter-Kingdom projects back then, a lot of cultural sharing. And a lot of it was built on the idea that 'The Great War must be the last war'."

Kai slowly nodded. "Okay, I think I'm starting to get it. The Kingdoms were never going to fight each other again, so... soldiers were just for Grimm."

"Right. The conceit that we'll never go to war again is part of what lets our global society function. I guess part of that is that a lot of things associated with war, however trivially, kind of became socially unacceptable, and then they just gradually mostly disappeared. Like... swearing," Weiss concluded.

"And yet," Kai murmured, setting her scroll on the table and flicking through a lot of very tense news articles. "I can't help but feel like there's a lot of swearing in Remnant's future, if Salem gets her way."

"... It's definitely tense," Weiss murmured. "I hope Winter's alright."

Kai decided to distract her a little, grinning rakishly as she asked, "And what do you think your sister will think of me?"

"I'll keep her from killing you, I promise," Weiss replied immediately with a smirk.

"So asking her for a date's entirely out of the question?"

" _Yes!_ "

Kai laughed, then grinned and waved as some of the others started filtering into the dining car. Eventually most of the group was assembled, and chatting as they nursed coffee, though Kai caught a whiff of additives from Qrow's.

'Hm. ... Eh, s'fine,' she assured herself.

It _was_ kind of early, though. Even for her.

Before she could brush it off again, a sort of cold shock ran through the dining car. The sheer concentrated amount of active Aura users intensified the sensation... chilled heat, empty hate, hollow looming.

"Grimm," Ren half-snarled, already coming to his feet.

"Just our luck," Reese huffed, snatching up Lioncub as she ran for the train door.

"Not yours," Qrow muttered sourly.

"You _do_ know that Grimm attacks are sort of a thing that happens on this planet, right?" Kai noted, glancing at Qrow wryly as they headed for the door, his lips thinning and eyes narrowing a bit in response.

As they alternately leapt or clambered up onto the top of the train, they saw the numerous wheeling flying Grimm. Most of them were sort of leonine, their skull masks trailing back into massive spiked fringes, though Kai quickly spotted one that was hanging back, its neck incredibly long, head almost spherical, its tail a lashing white serpent.

Dee and Dudley were already up and fighting, Dudley firing his rifle mostly ineffectively, Dee swinging his mace at any of the winged leonine Grimm that swept in. But then one came up from a high dive, grabbing him up, his partner screaming his name as the Grimm turned and hurled the Huntsman through the air towards the trees below, his mace spinning off into the forest.

The training they'd done at Haven kicked in almost without Kai thinking about it. "LIFELINE!"

Weiss twirled and flicked Myrtenaster forward, Reese already flashing forward and along the line of acceleration runes that built to a banked ramp. Weiss was already pirouetting to create another acceleration rune, Blake leaping through it to launch herself forward as Reese was twisting with the ramp, flinging forward over the side of the train, stretching out her arms, snatching Dee's vest with one and keeping the other open. Blake landed and twirled, Gambol Shroud firing once as she sent it hurtling out, the handle snapping almost perfectly into Reese's hand, Blake hauling her in like a fish on a line.

Dee hit hard with Reese on top of him, the big man breaking her fall... and his arm, from the snapping sound and the scream he gave. Reese instantly separated Lioncub and began firing into the wheeling Grimm above to defend the downed Hunstman.

" _Great_ job!" Ruby squeaked joyfully, spinning Crescent Rose to deploy it into scythe mode. "We don't let _anyone_ die!"

Dudley, seeing his partner safe, looked relieved for a brief moment before whipping out his scroll... only for Qrow to grab his wrist. "Do _not_ deploy the autoturrets!"

"But there's too many!" Dudley snapped back at him.

"You'll just draw the Grimm to the compartments with people in them!"

"Dudley! _Do_ what they _say_!" Dee shouted from beneath Reese, and from where he was now surrounded by the others semi-reliably taking out Grimm with every shot or swipe.

"... Tch!" Dudley yanked his hand out of Qrow's grip.

"Kai! What can I do?!" Oscar called from where he'd poked his head up above the edge of the train.

"One sec!" Kai called back, firing Red Legacy repeatedly above. Since Dee seemed so cooperative, she called, "Dee! Do the turrets have manual control?!"

"Yeah! By individual cars!"

"Can you work the controls one-handed?!"

" _Yeah_!"

"Oscar! Get Reese on her feet, then you and Dudley get Dee below, get on those turrets, and _start killing Grimm_!"

"Focus on the ones further off!" Jaune added as Oscar tumbled over the edge of the roof of the train, dodging a Grimm that landed and tried to take his head off, Yang instantly slamming a golden fist into the side of its head and Ruby slicing through its neck in retaliation. "Leave the ones that get close to the cars to us!"

Oscar grabbed Reese under her shoulders and hefted her up, Reese immediately twirling and ducking to one knee to keep firing, Dudley helping the boy get Dee up and on his feet to the edge of the car. Despite Kai having pegged him as the dumber and less cooperative of the two, Dudley nevertheless shouted, "There's a tunnel coming up! We'll retract the turrets when it gets close so you have time to get down!"

Only a few moments later the turrets on the back three cars lifted up, janking back and forth between twisting and starting to fire. It took enough of the pressure off the top of the train for Kai to focus.

_Ilia! When you were in the White Fang, did you ever sabotage trains?_

_What?!_ Ilia spun below one of Ruby's scythe slashes, cracking a Grimm across the face with Lightning Lash and letting Grey jump in to slam an Aura-enhanced punch right to the center of its mask, cracking it and sending it tumbling off the train. _Is this really the time for-?!_

_Yes or no?!_

**_Yes_ ** _, okay, I'm_ **_sor_ ** _-!_

 _No time for that shit! Get up to the engine car and_ **_un_ ** _sabotage it or whatever, get us moving as fast as you can!_

 _Ohhhh! Got it!_ Ilia jabbed a Grimm in the eye to make it flinch and then darted around it, dashing across the car and leaping back down.

"Where the hell's she going?!" Yang snapped, before whirling to slam her left fist into a Grim's mask, Celica firing enough to crack it, Reese vaulting up onto the blonde's shoulders to fire up with several quick shots from Lioncub to finish it off before flipping forward as Yang turned to fire at another.

"Language~!" Kai singsonged, making Yang shoot her an exasperated look before she added, "I gave her a job to do, so let's do ours!"

"HYAH!" Blake whirled, purple Aura crackling across her left fingertips, the Grimm that had been coming up on her back reeling back with a string of red wounds leading up to the chips in the edge of its mask, Gambol Shroud chattering a hail of bullets into those wounds and the cracks, the Grimm toppling back and starting to dissipate. 

"There's so _many_!" Nora called just a little bit desperately, even as she swung Magnhild hard, knocking a not-quite-landed Grimm into the path of the autoturret. "No matter how many we kill it seems like there's more coming! Could the Relic be doing all of this?!"

"It's a Grimmtrain!" Reese called over, wincing a little at the pun even as she was forced to turn and dive away from the swipe of a Grimm's paw, tumbling between Yang's legs and letting the big blonde step in with a blistering combo of punches. Reese leaped over onto the other car, briefly leaping off the extended thigh of Blake's shadow copy as the Faunus Huntress teleported to extend her own jump and land next to her partner. "They happen sometimes in the swamps! It starts with baby Nevermores flying past other baby Nevermores, picking up more into a flock, and it winds up drawing Pikeels and Gatrixes!"

"And it won't stop until we take out the Alpha that's taken over control of the new pack," Qrow growled, glaring at the massive Grimm that was hanging back.

Kai could swear it smirked at him.

 _Kai!_ Ilia's voice suddenly came in her head. _I'm about to speed up the train!_

"Everybody BRACE!" Kai called.

Despite the unusualness of the command, Weiss immediately spun and stabbed Myrtenaster into the train roof, forming black glyph circles under the party. Even as the train lurched and accelerated, all of them were held rooted to the metal. Some of the Grimm weren't so lucky, the sudden lurch of the train roof under them robbing them of their footing, some tumbling off the cliff-side of the train to wheel and twist trying to catch themselves in the air. One went to the wall-side of the train and was driven beneath its wheels, the car giving a lurch as black smoke began issuing from below.

Barely a second later, the turrets whirred and started to retract. "Tunnel!" Jaune called in reminder, shoving the Grimm he'd been blocking on his shield back and spinning aside. It leaped forward, but Grey moved to meet it, Aura crackling around Hell Ticket and his feet as he somehow caught the big beast by the horns without giving an inch, then reached forward to grab the edge of its mask and just tear it off.

Everyone retreated below, quickly assembling in the caboose. Dee was slumped against the wall, trembling a little with the pain of his broken arm, though he quickly straightened up and tried to look the tough guy. His eyes showed fear again though as Jaune laid a hand on his arm... and then shock and wonder as white-gold energy played around his limb, the color turning a deep brown as the bruising started to disappear.

"Will the tunnel drive off the Grimm?" Kai asked Dee as the door slid open and Ilia rejoined them.

"... No," he grunted, making himself look up at her. "It's never been this bad before but we've dealt with smaller swarms. They won't be able to attack while we're inside, but some of them will run through it after us and others will just go over, the tunnel's not long enough or deep enough to make them lose interest. There's another about twenty minutes ahead that is, though."

"Twenty minutes is a long damn time with a Grimmtrain building bigger and bigger on us," Qrow grumbled.

"Ren, do you think you could hide the train with your Semblance?" Ruby asked, a little apologetic. The teams knew how Ren felt about using his ability.

Ren winced, just the tiniest bit, but considered it. "I've never hidden this many people before," he admitted. "But I think with Jaune's help, maybe I could."

"But it won't matter if-" Qrow glanced at the glowing artifact on Oscar's belt, before his eyes flicked to the 'uninitiated' Huntsmen. "If the Grimm don't have something to distract them. They're not entirely blind... every other time Ren's hidden someone with his Semblance, there were other things around to take the Grimm's notice. Out here in the wastes, they'll just keep following the big moving object they're already focused on."

Whether it was true or not, it was as good an explanation as they had for keeping the two strangers out of the loop. Kai looked at Ruby, red eyes meeting silver, and then both of them looking at Jaune. Jaune nodded back, before saying, "We're going to have to separate the train. Get all of the passengers into the front, while others stay with the back to draw the Grimm off." He hesitated only the merest second before adding, "Team JNPR will have to be on the front of the train."

"Then Team RWBY and Team KACH should stick together!" Ruby declared.

"Yeah, with one exception," Kai amended, stepping forward. "Ilia, you need to go with Team JNPR," she said, resting her hands on her sister's shoulders.

"What? Kai, no, we're partners, Huntress partners stick together," Ilia replied almost desperately.

"I know, Rainbow, but they'll need you to slow down the train for hard curves or when you get to Argus. Plus, our psycomms will let us stay in touch a little longer after everyone loses scroll reception." She squeezed Ilia's shoulders gently. "This isn't me sending you away because I don't trust you or think you can't take care of yourself, it's because I do trust you and I know you'll take care of our friends."

"... Alright, Kai." Ilia nodded once, lifting her chin. "You can count on me."

"I always do."

"We'll be coming out of the tunnel soon," Dee grunted with a glance at his scroll, before looking up. "Dudley, you go with the passenger cars, when you get to Argus get to the company office... no, nevermind, they can't do a damn thing, go to the military base, get us some help. I'll stay with these guys."

"That's _not_ necessary," Qrow almost growled back, obviously fighting the urge to roll his eyes.

"Hey! You _saved_ my _life_!" Dee snapped back. "... I owe you," he added, the words as much a plea as a statement. Begging not to be seen as the joke everyone pegged him as back at the station.

"... Fine," Qrow grumbled, pointing a finger at his face. "But you do what I say, when I say it, and if you die I don't wanna hear you complaining, got me?"

"Huh?! Well, I mean... y-yeah."

"Let's get it done, guys," Kai declared, the groups starting to split up... but she reached a hand out to snag Jaune's forearm. "Hey, Arc," she added, keeping her voice low. "Make sure and keep her safe for me, okay?"

There was a momentary flash of pain and anger in his eyes, just a heartbeat of taking it as an implication he couldn't protect Ilia like he still seemed to feel he'd failed to protect Pyrrha. Then it melted into the realization that Kai just needed some assurance that he'd look out for the person dearest to her in the world. "I will. I promise." He nodded. "I'll get it done."

"I know you will."

As the train emerged from the tunnel, the party once again scrambled back up onto the rooftops, Team JNPR and Ilia moving to stand atop the forward part of the train, all of the passengers having been urged forward of that car. Blake fired a few times to force circling Grimm back before leaning forward over the connectors. "Ready?!"

Kai kept her eyes fixed on Ilia's, not looking away. Not wanting to say the words. Knowing she had to.

_Jeff Williams - Miracle_

"Do it."

Blake brought the heavy blade of Gambol Shroud down on the connector, severing it with a loud shriek of metal-on-metal. Kai's eyes snapped down to her as her whole body suddenly gave a paroxysm of fear response, her weapon even raising, red eyes snapping back up to look at the retreating car but seeing nothing. Nothing but her friends drawing further away from her, even their colors starting to fade away Ren layered his Semblance over the entire train.

Then she turned back around, once more unsheathing Red Legacy, lips twisting in a near-snarl. "Let's show these fuckers what a bad fight they picked."

"Language," Yang murmured warmly from beside her, once more transforming Celica and extending her arm-gun.

"We need to take out the Alpha!" Ruby cried, nodding at the massive, long-necked Grimm that had once more settled into a pace-keeping hover behind the train, pumping its wings to keep pace. "Uncle Qrow, Kai, and I can do it! But we have to get it to land and pin it down!"

"Yang and I can pin it if you get it close enough," Blake assured her, even as she sent a flurry of fire into one of the newly-encroaching Grimm, various sizes of Nevermore now mixed with the rest of the flight.

"... Right." Kai whirled and sliced the beak off of a human-sized Nevermore. She was about to give another order she didn't want to give, but a necessary one, and one she knew the recipient could handle. "Oscar. Draw him in."

For just a moment raw, absolute fear played across those green-gold eyes. Then his shoulders squared and his chin lifted, and for a second Kai thought Ozma had taken control. But it was Oscar's manner of speaking as he said, "Count on me!"

"Always will," she murmured, converting Red Legacy to shooting mode and firing ahead. "Go!"

Oscar went diving into the small path she'd opened up for him, dodging Grimm as he went. One hopped forward to swipe at him, only for Dee to slam his improvised weapon into it, the length of rebar with duct tape wrapped around it to form a make-do handle enough to at least deflect the blow and let Reese duck in and start firing into its neck behind its mask.

"Hey! Hey!" Oscar called as he dove and rolled beneath an airborne Grimm that tried to snap him. Coming to his feet on the next-to-last car, he waved both hands. "Hey! This is what you want, right?!" he called, pointing at the lamp on his belt.

The Grimm's eyes locked on him. Just as before, Kai could swear that an almost human expression came across its face, but this time absolute, utter rage, its head drawing back and then launching forward as it let out a shriek.

"< **_OZZZZZZZZZZZZZZMAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!_ **>"

"What?" Kai gasped, for the first time in her life feeling the sensation of her blood running cold.

But the beast was diving for Oscar, and there was no time to be terrified down to her very soul no matter how much she wanted to be. Just before it would crash into him, Reese shot forward on Lioncub, snatching him back and out of the way as she executed a hard turn, the Grimm slamming into the rooftop instead.

"GO!" Yang called, rushing forward, accelerating herself and juking around Grimm with her guns, Blake doing a rapidfire flurry of teleporting. Weiss flitted Myrtenaster through the air and curled her fingers, creating an acceleration glyph on the near side of the Grimm as it hauled itself to all fours, Blake jumping through it and shooting up and over, twisting to land on the far side.

Flinging Gambol Shroud forward and yanking the variable ribbon to get it to fire, Blake sent it launching down towards Yang, who smashed her fist into the weapon, firing to fling it back under the Grimm's belly towards Blake, who flicked out a finger to fire it again and send it looping back over. Yang grabbed hold of Gambol Shroud's ribbon this time, both of them hauling down on the Grimm to try and haul it to the roof... and both yelping as it threw itself against its bonds, almost yanking them off their feet.

"< **_OZZZZZZZZZZZZZZMAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!_ **>" it howled, its shuddering shriek of a voice pure rage, pure pain, pure hate, in its thrashing not even seeming to notice as Weiss skated through the air in front of it, a pair of glowing blue glyphs chilling its wings until they shattered.

"We can't _hold_ it!" Blake called desperately as she was almost lifted entirely off her feet by the Grimm's next lurch.

"Dammit! Dee!" Grey snapped, taking off at a run, the other man right on his heels. Grey leapt up, actually rebounding off the rapidly-passing cliff wall beside them before slamming himself back to the train roof next to Blake with a crackle of Aura around his legs. Both of them grabbed hold of the ribbon with the Huntresses... and found themselves being dragged as it continued to thrash.

"What the hell is this thing?!" Dee yelped as he and Yang struggled to haul it back down. "I've never seen a Grimm this strong!"

"It shouldn't _be_ that strong," Qrow snarled, having somehow moved from the forward part of the cut-off train to the back when no one was looking.

"< **_OZZZZZZZZZZZZZZMAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!_ **>"

"On three!" Yang cried half-desperately. "One! Two! THREE!" All four instantly threw everything they had into hauling the thrashing, shrieking creature down, finally managing to make it bend the knee and slam its belly against the rooftop. Kai instantly slapped a purple-painted magazine into Red Legacy.

"GO!" the redhead snapped, darting forward at a run as Qrow and Ruby ducked into crouches and swung their scythes back. She flung herself towards the Grimm, not even needing to look as she leaped up, Reese hurling Lioncub out under her feet, the hoverboard catching and swinging through the air.

'I should say something as I shoot it,' she thought, time almost seeming to slow as she swung out over the void, right in front of the Grimm's twisted, hateful face, its mouth opening and a blazing hellfire starting to build within with the intent of obliterating her. 'Something cool. Something heroic.'

" _FUCK_ YOU FOR MAKING ME SEND AWAY MY RAINBOW!" she howled as she fired multiple Gravity rounds right into its face.

Red Legacy's barrel and ammo were big, the purple splatters of force striking and whipping the Grimm's head back so hard that it would have gotten whiplash were it an actual flesh and blood creature. Immediately Qrow and Ruby launched themselves into the air, firing their weapons to fly forward and into a spin, scythe blades neatly slicing that long neck in half and sending its head tumbling off into the trees below, the massive body slamming to the train roof and already starting to dissipate.

Kai landed, sweeping around to bleed off momentum and twirling Lioncub up and under her arm. " _Hell_ yeah!"

"We did it!" Ruby called happily, giving a little hop from where she'd landed nearby.

"Wait! Look! The Grimm!" Oscar called, pointing upward.

They all saw it the moment he cried out. Rather than dispersing from their flight, the airborne Grimm were forming up into a single tight flock, moving as if of one mind and thought, banking ahead and then looping down... driving themselves right under the front of the train. The front car lurched hard, the Grimm not dissipating fast enough to keep it from banking up their dying bodies like a ramp and twisting towards the cliffside. 

Desperately, Weiss spun and went to one knee, repeating her earlier trick of forming black holding glyphs beneath everyone's feet, leaving them to lurch and twist as the train tumbled down, staying mostly upright even as it met the treeline.

'Oh shit,' was Kai's last thought before the tree branch made contact.


	35. Chapter 25

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Kai wants to live, quite possibly because she doesn't know what the rest of her day is going to be like.

January 6, 244 AGW, 3:30 PM (Remnant 4482)

'Damn, how long was I out?' Kai thought as she came to, finding herself practically buried in snow. Or... had there been snow on the ground already? She kind of thought there had been, but it was hard to focus, hard to think... it must be the cold of the snow that had her all logey and feeling drained. She was laying on her stomach and basically just her back and the kitty ears of her hood were sticking out, seemed like.

'Hm. Maybe I'm dead,' she thought, tilting her head, really only able to see a white expanse. Then she looked forward and raised her head a little, and decided she might be.

The woman in front of her certainly looked like she could be some little Makarzian cult's endearing escort to the afterlife. The big cyan-lensed cybereyes gazing down at her, dominating a wrinkled brown face, certainly reminded her of slightly antiquated Makarzian tech. The blue poncho and dress were bordering on 'daytimer' but the embroidery and the skull theme of her jewelry put her back a little towards 'night creature'. The skull-capped cane she was leaning on wasn't bad either.

"I wouldn't move if I were you, dear," the old woman croaked almost cheerfully. "You look like you're in a bad way?"

"Wha?" Kai replied, and ever stubborn, immediately tried to shove herself to her feet.

One arm instantly crumpled with a spasm of pain so intense that it had her screaming, the muscle spasms through the rest of her body the only reason she wound up flopping over onto her back. She looked down, saw the crimson snow in the indent where she'd been, the shredded skin and torn flesh of her front, the tear in the arm of her coat where she could see bone poking through her arm where it was at the wrong angle.

"Told you," the woman said, more grimly.

'No... Niobe's coat,' Kai thought despairingly, the thought seeming to echo in her head.

"Kai!" Ruby's voice called, seemingly from a great distance even as she saw the red-hooded girl fling herself to her knees beside her, silver eyes darting back and forth. "Okay, okay, stay calm, stay calm, we can do something," she murmured, seemingly more to herself than to Kai.

"I'm sorry," she could hear Weiss sobbing from nearby. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry..."

In fact everyone seemed kind of upset. Yang cursed under her breath, and Kai almost grinned as she thought 'Language.' Dee was blurting that someone needed to do something, while Ozma called for everyone to remain calm in a way that said he wasn't. Reese was just swearing a blue streak, her voice watering, and it sounded like she was rummaging desperately in her bag. 

Then Ruby was shoved aside, replaced by Grey in her view. "Kai? Kai, you need to focus, you need to reach into your pocket and get your Guildhall beacon, I can't get you up to use mine."

'He's pretty,' Kai thought, smiling at him, the way her vision was darkening around the edges making the sunlight glow around his dark, thick hair. 'Like an angel.'

"All of you  _ shut up _ ," the old woman's voice suddenly snapped, Grey jerking back a bit as if the force of it had surprised him. Then those big cybereyes were looking at her upside-down. "Now I may be blind, young lady, but somehow you have the look of someone who isn't going to die today. Maybe you should think very hard and focus on what you  _ do _ want to do."

'What I... want to do?' It was hard to focus, but somehow it seemed a fair request, so she tried to push her mind towards it. 'I guess... I want to see Grey's face again for a start, but I don't want him to look sad like that. ... Or Ruby either, she always looks cutest when she's laughing. I want Weiss to stop crying... actually I don't want Weiss to ever do anything but smile. I want to finally read that book Blake gave me, and if it's goofy or cheesy I want to tease her about it with Yang. I want to give Jaune a hug. I want to eat Ren's pancakes with Nora, and play with Reese for hours after even though I'm so stuffed it hurts. I want Qrow to bum my cigarettes and pay with stories. I wanna hear Oscar's flustered farmboy noises and see that look in his eyes when I tell him he's done good, and I want Ozma to tell me I'm of the highest quality again. I want to see Niobe again, and hear her say she's proud of me one more time. I want to see Ico again, and I want her to hug me and call me hers. I want to make a home for Zee, and have her there when I come home to it. ... I wanna be with my Rainbow, forever and always.'

She closed her eyes, a tear sliding down her cheek. 'I wanna live.'

And then she sucked in a hard breath as scarlet light crackled all across her body.

"By all that's holy," Grey hissed, actually drawing back a little in sheer shock as Kai's flesh began to knit together, little strips of skin slipping back into place and rejoining with the rest as if they'd never been parted in the first place. Swelling and discoloration faded, bone slipping back into skin and angles righting, Kai giving another shuddery breath as the weight of blood filling her lungs just vanished. And the tattered and ripped edges of her coat mended themselves back together.

Blinking, Kai sat up and glanced down at herself. "... Well that's a hell of a thing. Oof," she added as Grey thumped against her front and threw his arms around her.

"... Kai... Kai..."

"Hey," she acknowledged with a smile, putting a hand on the back of his head and leaning hers against his.

"Even her  _ clothes _ healed?!" Yang blurted, her jaw slack.

"I've... never seen a healing Semblance like that," Qrow rasped, the shaking in his hands slowly subsiding as he stared at Kai gently petting Grey's hair.

"Nor," Ozma remarked, quirking an eyebrow. "Have I."

"Huh. Guess I heal good  _ and _ fast now," Kai remarked as Grey finally pulled away and helped her to her feet. 

"How'd you know?" Dee asked in wonder, staring at the old woman.

"Didn't. She just has the look of a survivor, is all," she declared breezily in reply.

"I'm okay, guys," Kai assured everyone as she walked over to give the still slightly shaking Reese a hug. "I kind of thought maybe I had one of those Semblance things, back on Kuo Kuana, when I got stabbed but a little bit later I was okay. I guess this time I just needed a kickstart or something."

"It  _ is _ like that sometimes," Ozma agreed, bobbing his head. "Semblances often awaken on their own, even before Aura is unlocked... there have been a rare few cases where they were documented as working before birth, in fact. But it is not uncommon for them to exist in a slight or more passive form until some more direct impetus is applied. It seems our new acquaintance has provided that impetus."

"Maria Calavera, pleased to meet you," the woman said with a boisterous cackle.

"Thanks for the help," Kai acknowledged with a grateful nod. "Also what the hell are you doing out here?"

"Hmmmm? I was on my way to Mantle via Argus for maintenance, of course, these have been acting up lately," Maria replied, raising her cane to tap the side of her cybereyes lightly. "... Oh you meant on the back part of the traaaaain," she continued, as everyone stared at her. "Hey, you can't expect an old woman to get up from the nice comfy spot she's found for herself just because a lot of noisy young people have started shouting they're going to cut the train in half, can you?"

Yang rolled her eyes, then turned and made her way over towards where her motorcycle Bumblebee had fallen from the freight car and wound up half-buried in the snow, starting to yank on the handlebars trying to free it. "Great. We're stranded out here in the middle of nowhere with a little old woman who couldn't be bothered to evacuate to the front of the train, and is going blind on us," she grunted amidst her tugs.

"Here, let me help," Dee said, rushing over.

Yang shot him a look with a scowl... then seemed to notice that his eyes were on the bike and not her arm. After a second she nodded. "Okay, take hold there, and on three."

"Uh ma'am?" Reese stepped over to Maria, raising a hand slightly. "I could maybe have a look at your eyes if you'd be okay with that and see if there's anything I could do? I'm not a cybernetics specialist but I've studied what I can and I know a lot about tech."

Something about Reese's voice made Maria cant her head slightly to the side. "You from down near Baoula way, girl?"

"Yessum thizyeeah gull frumma swom yessum," Reese replied immediately, voice dropping a little and adopting an almost croaking rhythm.

Maria chuckled, a bit more warmly than the cackle of before. "Din yoo beh lookinat deze peepins, gehl," she drawled back in a slower, more languid twang.

As Reese rummaged in her bag for her tools, Kai drew Ozma aside, lowering her voice. "Is Oscar okay?"

"He is. He is a bit overwhelmed and mentally exhausted, and therefore allowed me to step back to the fore," Ozma replied just as quietly. He glanced about, then let his voice resume its normal volume. "We are very glad you are alright, Miss Sterling, but now we must turn our attention to the situation. Everyone, begin searching the area for our things or anything that might be of use, we have a long journey ahead of us."

As the others began to disperse to do just that, Weiss made her way over. "Kai, I am  _ so sorry, _ " she whispered, blue eyes damp. "All I wanted to do was keep people from being thrown off the train, but if I hadn't been holding you down..."

Kai blinked, then took a step closer. "Weiss, you have nothing to be sorry about. You made the right call, 100%."

Weiss jerked her head back a bit, almost as if she'd been slapped. "How can you  _ say _ that?! You got hurt! You almost  _ died _ !"

"And even if I  _ did _ die it still would have been the right call," the redhead replied firmly, the white-haired woman's jaw going a little slack. "Weiss you probably saved everyone's lives by thinking to pin us in place again when we went over. Everyone could have been thrown from the train and been hurt, or worse. It was the right call, and just because it didn't work perfectly doesn't mean it wasn't."

"... But..." Weiss whispered, hugging herself and looking away. And Kai could see the unspoken words written all over her.

'But I need to be perfect.'

Sighing softly, Kai rested her hands on Weiss's shoulders. "Do I need to do everything perfectly? Does Ruby, or Jaune?"

"I... well, I mean  _ no _ , but," Weiss murmured, glancing away.

"If we're not expected to be perfect and we're the leaders, why is it fair to demand it of you?"

Weiss let her head slump a little. Then, after a second, nodded slightly. "Okay. ... Thank you."

"No big." Kai grinned, gave her a wink, and patted her on the shoulder. "Let's all get this done, okay?"

* * *

"What I really wanted to do was kiss her.

"I wanted to take hold of that pretty chin and lift it up and kiss her and hope that made it all better. But I wrote it off as a passing fancy, just something about how she was so pretty standing there in the snow with her glittery Dust-infused dress and that vulnerable look in her eyes.

"I wonder what she'd have done, if I'd just kissed her all of a sudden like that. Hahaha, probably just then she'd have slapped me. She would have taken it for me being on my bullshit and it was definitely not the time for that.

"Man I was on a whole different type of bullshit though and I didn't even know it yet. Weiss sure as hell didn't."

* * *

As Weiss went to join the search for usable items, Kai spotted Grey standing and looking off into the distance, obviously turning things over in his head. She made her way over to join him, settling in at his side and fishing out a cigarette.

"Pretty wild shit, Red," Grey commented with a glance at her. "Glad you're okay, though. You are okay, right?"

"Sure seem to be. Thanks, Grey." She thought about bringing up just how relieved he'd been, maybe even teasing him over it a bit, but decided that even she couldn't be that crass as a joke. "Here, one second," she added, closing her eyes.  _ Ilia? _

_ Kai! _ Ilia's mental voice was scratchy, like an old comm sending through an electrical storm.  _ Is everyone okay? _

_ We're okay Rainbow. The train derailed but we all got through it. How about over there? _

_ We're alright, Ren's resting up just in case but we shook the Grimm entirely it looks like. I think we're getting to the maximum distance of the psycomms, though, _ she added, her sending crackling even worse.

_ Alright, we're gonna make our way to Argus as best we can, stay safe and listen to Jaune _ , Kai sent back quickly.

_ okay _

And then that soft familiar voice was too far away. Further away than she'd ever been since the two of them had met.

Kai found herself struggling just a little not to cry.

"Ilia and the others are okay, but they're out of psycomm range now," Kai informed Grey once she was sure her voice would be even. "Probably would have kept it longer since she's a hub but mine's just Makarzian tech, not Guild."

"She got a Makarzian comm on her?"

"No, we stopped using them, we got to where we thought the Street Demons might start tracking them individually. I've only got my Guild comm on me besides my scroll."

Grey snorted. "And the only person on Remnant who also has a Guild comm is standing two feet from you. ... It's pretty bad, Red," he added, frowning at the snowy expanse ahead.

"Yeah," Kai murmured, having done the mental calculations on roughly how far they'd traveled and how far they had left to go on the train ride when they'd derailed. She glanced at the others, who seemed to be ambling about more like they were mildly inconvenienced on a bus trip than anything else. "Do they not get that?"

"It's their training. Personal drama you can't really train someone to deal with like it's nothing, but survival situations like this is exactly what they go to combat school and the academies to learn," Grey supplied with a shrug.

"Fair enough." Kai rubbed her arms a bit. She did a few more mental calculations. "I figure... if we keep all of us that are combat capable in enough calories to fight... which we obviously need to be... I've got enough to spread out for about three days. Maybe."

"I've probably got about the same, yeah," Grey agreed. A combination of dimensional pockets and high calorie density meals and foodbars made it easy for most mercs to carry long term survival amounts of food, after all. He glanced over at the scattered cars. "Figure we rummage through the freight, find some more stuff in luggage, maybe... two more days, if we're really lucky. Five or six if the train company was smart enough to load their survival packs with enough foodbars or packs."

"So six days for our worst case scenario, twelve at best. Can we get to Argus in that?"

"Not in six. Ten maybe. If the weather doesn't get too bad and we don't run into too many Grimm. And no one gets hurt. And we don't have to stop to bury the old woman."

Kai made a face at him, but sighed. "I'm not liking the number of variables we're looking at here."

"Same."

The redhead looked over at the others, appraising the group's status. Reese now had a panel on the side of Maria's eyes open, her goggles in place as she delicately worked with small, thin tools inside them. Blake and Dee were helping Yang fit Bumblebee with snow tires rummaged out of the freight. Ruby looked to be focusing on picking up scattered ammo, and Weiss occasionally closing her eyes before making her way towards a crate or suitcase, probably feeling out Dust. Ozma was moving about, tension to his movements as he scanned the ground keenly... Kai suddenly realized the lamp wasn't on Oscar's belt, which probably explained it.

"How many guest passes you got on you?" she asked quietly.

Grey was silent for a moment as he followed her gaze, similarly appraising the group. "... Four."

'You do like to party, don't you?' she thought, fighting the urge to give an impressed whistle. But she simply nodded once, not really needing to think about it. "If it gets really bad, I want you to take Ruby, Oscar, Reese, and Blake, and portal to the Guildhall. Do what you think is best from there."

Grey said nothing for a bit. Then he nodded. "Okay." Then he glanced at her, seeming curious. "Why Blake?"

Kai snorted softly. "As if you'd leave without her."

"... Yeah," Grey murmured, coming dangerously close to grinning.

* * *

"Pft. Yeah. I could smell my own.

"Grey had 'surrogate older sibling' written all over him those days. He teased the hell out of Blake, and she'd smack him on the arm whenever he said something that got her goat or she just thought he needed it. You think Grey Bloody Claws would have tolerated getting smacked on the arm by some slip of a teenage girl because he made a comment about some woman's ass in public?

"Grey Bloody Claws would have taken her head off. Literally.

"Grey Heliotrope, who he was learning to be again, glowered at her and lowered his ears, and deep in those gunship-colored eyes he was happy as hell."

* * *

Kai's mind turned to other matters, and she lowered her voice as she asked, "Grey... did you hear it?"

She could see from the way his ears laid down that she didn't have to clarify what she meant. His weren't as expressive as Blake's, so the thought of what had happened on the train had clearly shaken him. "... Yeah. Yeah, I heard it."

"They didn't," Kai said, feeling certain of that as she glanced towards the rest. "There's no way I'd have missed that fear response in them if they had." She looked back at Grey. "Could it be our translator nanos?"

"Grimm don't  _ have _ language, Kai," Grey asserted almost angrily, more, she thought, because he was very desperate to believe it just then.

"Yeah well they sure as hell know his name," she muttered, looking over at Ozma as he peered under some wreckage. "... Salem?"

"Oz never told us anything about her being able to... possess Grimm or something," Grey grumbled, scowling a bit in the immortal's direction.

"Yeah, which means he's either still holding back on us... or, the scarier option..." Kai shuddered a little. "There's still shit he doesn't know about her."

"Oz-... -car!" Ruby suddenly called, rushing over towards him. "I found it!"

"Excellent," Ozma replied, shedding relief signs like a white cat on a black hoodie as he accepted the Relic back from Ruby. He looked at it for a few moments... then proffered it back. "Why don't you hold on to it, though, for the moment Miss Rose?"

"Oh? Really?" Ruby blinked, even as she accepted the lamp back. "Are you sure?"

"Yes. While... 'my' training has been coming along well, out here it might be best if it stays with one of our most capable warriors." He hesitated, then added more softly, "Please take good care of her."

"... Okay." Ruby nodded once, clearly understanding this was important, if not why, and clipped the lamp to her belt. "I promise."

* * *

"It would be a long time yet before I got to meet Jinn. When I did... let's just say I immediately felt a connection.

"I always liked that Ozma, when he got around to talking about her, even though he called her an 'entity' he still stressed that she needed to be treated like a person. Not just some computer program you could type questions into a search bar. He actually cared about her.

"I think Jinn was the only one that had known him for so long that he actually felt like she was a friend, even if that wasn't really what they were. It had been such a relief for him to come clean to us... I wonder how long he'd gone with only her knowing who he was, what he was... and what he had done.

"Well. Her and Salem. Which probably wasn't a comforting thought at all."

* * *

"Uh. Yang?" Reese called from beside Maria, far more hesitation and uncertainty in her voice than usual.

"Yeah, what's up?" Yang replied, walking over.

"I really hate to ask this, but I... kind of need a part from your arm," the green-haired girl said with a wince.

Yang blinked. "What part?"

"I... need the minute motion compensation calibrator."

"Wait, what will not having that do to Yang's arm?" Blake asked with a frown as she came to stand beside her partner.

Reese hesitated, eyes squinching a bit in obvious discomfort. "You'll, um, you'll lose. Like. Fine movement control. You'll have to be careful. About picking stuff up. 'Cause your hand will clench. Without any strength control. Can rig up a replacement... when we get safe." She glanced back and forth between Yang and Maria, before adding in a whisper, "The calibrator in Miss Calavera's eyes is gonna fail in like a day."

Yang's face twisted in a bit of a scowl, but before she could say anything Kai stepped over.

"Everyone take a breath," she said firmly, before leaning down and rubbing Reese's back, whispering, "Breathe, okay?"

It had subtly terrified her that Reese's usual energetic runon had been degenerating into sentence fragments. That was a bad sign.

They weren't handling the stress as well as they seemed at all.

Yang took a deep breath herself, then asked, a bit more levelheadedly, "Couldn't you just rig up the replacement for her eyes? No offense," she added with a glance at Maria.

"Mm-hm-hm," Maria softly mock-chuckled, as if not having yet decided whether she was going to take offense or not.

Reese gave a rictus of a grin. "Um. Basically because... optic nerves? Like I can rig up a replacement for the compensator with scroll parts when we get somewhere safe, but it'll still fritz occasionally. If it fritzes in your arm your fingers will twitch for a second. If it fritzes on her, it's... like a two hour migraine. Sorry."

Yang stared at her for a moment, then looked at Maria... and sighed, hauling the glove off of her right arm. "Well, hell."

"Language," Ruby squeaked, then grinned sheepishly when Yang shot her a look that said it wasn't the time.

"Seriously, though, the parts are so universal that you can just interchange 'em like that?" Yang asked with a thoughtful frown as Reese used her tools to open a panel on the underside of the arm. 

"Nah this stuff's absolutely pure custom work actually when you let me look at your armgun I got a good eye for the layout and then when I saw the inside of Miss Calavera's eyes I knew they'd been designed and built by the same ffffishing genius," Reese chattered, seemingly back to normal now that she was being allowed to both help and be in her wheelhouse. 

"Oh, you're the beneficiary of Pietro's work too?" Maria practically chirped as Yang's fingers twitched and shuddered briefly, Reese pulling a thin, silvery device out and moving to slide it into the panel on the old woman's eyes. "You must be something special, then, dearie! ... Hm, alright, no offense taken," she added with a bob of the head, as if satisfied.

"Uh. Thanks, I guess?" Yang blinked, closing up the panel on her arm herself and sliding the glove back on, moving her right hand a bit more carefully. "Is it that big of a deal? I mean it was a big deal to me, yeah," she hurried to add. "But I thought they were just something the Atlas military had laying around for their soldiers."

"If it's Pietro's work, dearie, someone went to him and very personally asked for his help with it," Maria declared, voice going a bit solemn. "You are the beneficiary of one of the finest minds this world has to offer. While he's always been as generous with his gifts as his budget and time allow, if it's a  _ Huntress _ grade piece of work? No, you went to the top of the list, for whatever reason."

"... Huh." Yang glanced down at her arm, flexing her fingers, making a face as her fist clenched instead. Then she eyed Maria. "So what does that make you?"

Maria smirked at her as Reese closed the panel on the side of her cybereyes, the shutters above them twisting and moving, obviously going through some sort of calibration sequence. "Old."

Yang rolled her eyes at that, before Dee approached and thumped down a bag almost as large as one of the smols. "I got everything I could out of the train after checking the cargo manifests and going through some of the bags. The medical supplies and heat packs were mostly okay, but uh..." He rubbed the back of his head. "Looks like the company stored the disinfectant in glass bottles. It broke in the crash and shredded the food pouches."

Kai and Grey exchanged a glance.

"Wonderful," Qrow growled, the pinched look on his face telling Kai that he was blaming himself again. "Well I hope everyone remembered to bring plenty of survival rations."

"Grey and I have enough food for everyone for about six days," Kai spoke up, clearly startling some of the others. "What's everyone else got on them?"

One by one everyone started listing what they had brought in the way of food and water. Kai was a little surprised by Maria listing off her own rations, and even moreso when Dee gave a longer list than anyone else... but then, she realized he did this run all the time. Even if he wasn't the brightest bulb in the box, the thought of someday getting stranded out in the field had to have occurred to him at some point.

"Okay, so that's about eight days if we go a little lean," Kai allowed... then blinked, realizing they'd missed someone, glancing at Qrow. "Hey, what've you got? You didn't forget your own damn survival advice, did you?"

She immediately saw a nervous flit to his eyes.

"Nah, I'm sure I visited the store before we left," Qrow said quickly, digging in one pocket, then the other. "I know I did... ah, yeah," he said, starting to draw out a foodbar... and sending a little rain of clear plastic pouches raining to the snow. "... Ah, yeah, s'right, I bought liquid nutrients. I know no one likes those, I'll just-"

"'Liquid nutrients', huh?" Grey had slipped around to the side while they'd been talking, and now snatched up one of the packets. He stared at the writing, then scowled, some cross between contempt and disappointment in his eyes as he flung it against Qrow's chest, the red-eyed man snapping up a hand to catch it. "The booze isn't even a half-decent brand, Qrow."

"... Unca Qrow?" Ruby said very softly.

Qrow looked at her, at the pleading in her silver eyes to say it had just been a mistake. Over at Yang to see the slightly resigned expression on her face.

He looked away.

"Just a slip of the mind," he muttered.

"... Uh." Dee cleared his throat, rubbing the back of his neck. "A-anyway, at this time of year there's not necessarily a lot of daylight left and the snow seems like it's gonna get thicker. Should we shelter for the night in the train cars, do you think? We could clear one out, make a fire, start out in the morning."

Qrow seemed eager for the change of topic, and just as eager to brush off Dee's suggestion because of the source. But he stopped, looked at the train car, thought it over. Finally though he shook his head. "No. The Grimmtrain's dispersed now but we can't risk some stragglers stumbling on us in the night. Better to take our chances moving on ahead."

"There's a trail over there," Maria pointed out, gesturing with her cane. "Trails usually lead somewhere."

"... Good idea," Yang allowed after glancing over at it. "I can ride Bumblebee slow ahead, and make a break in the snow for everyone to walk in."

"Single file, good, Grimm aren't the only thing out here, there's stuff that can think and track," Qrow grunted.

"You're such a  _ mood lifter _ , aren't you?" Maria scoffed, prompting Qrow to shoot her a look.

"Uh ma'am?" Reese stepped forward, holding Lioncub. "I know it might not be the comfiest thing in the world but I can rig up my board to float higher. You could sit on it and we could tether it to let Yang pull you so you don't have to walk in the snow."

"I'm pretty capable of walking when I need to, missy," Maria assured her... then smiled. "... But damn if my hip isn't giving me some trouble in this cold, so thank you. Your parents must be very proud of you."

Kai wished she could have somehow told Maria that almost anything would have been better to say.

Reese winced. "Um. Yeah. Sure. Maybe." She turned, fishing some nylon rope out of her bag and starting to rig up the tether.

* * *

"Reese's parents were fucking morons.

"They weren't bad people, really. They were just fucking morons. They'd wanted a perfect little princess and fate had instead handed them one of the most fascinating, glorious, unique creatures Remnant had ever seen.

"They got exasperated when she broke all the rules of what they thought she was supposed to be and a lot of the ones that society said she was supposed to be.

"They didn't see how readily she took to any of the things she was supposed to be that she thought actually mattered. Like, apparently in Baoula, 'respect the elderly' was a big one. Sure part of it was probably Reese's attachment to her grandpa, but the way she treated Maria wasn't some put-on or just her trying to mind her manners in front of an adult, all of it was because she deeply believed that the elderly were to be cherished and cared for.

"Maria saw it too. I think it's why she actually accepted the help, when otherwise she could be as stubborn as Yang. Reese wasn't helping her because she thought Maria was too weak or fragile on her own, but because she'd earned some help and respect by living so long on a world where people often didn't."

* * *

Kai and Grey took a quick loop around the site doing their own search and recovery, finding bits and pieces, some of it their own. Yang and Dee worked to affix the heavy pack to Bumblebee, trying to get the weight right so it would give the bike traction in the snow. Weiss and Ruby put their heads together, bickering quietly.

"Grey, take Blake and go scout out that path, huh?" Kai suggested before wandering over towards the short women. She quickly picked up that the argument was over a map, and where they might be on it. "Man, what I wouldn't give for a GPS."

"A wha?" Ruby asked, glancing up.

"Global Positioning System. Y'know. Uses satellites to triangulate where you are, gives you a guided line to where you're going?"

Weiss stared at her blankly. "What do you mean, 'satellite'?"

Kai opened her mouth. Closed it. Glanced up. Remnant's moon was already out... half-shattered and very, very big with its proximity.

"Oh. Yeah. Right."

"The old woman's right, it's a path for sure," Grey said as he and Blake returned from their short sojourn. "It looks like someone packed the earth down at some point, probably to make a dirt road to the train tracks."

Kai frowned. "I thought they didn't do 'country life' on Remnant."

"Mostly we don't, but every so often someone makes a settlement, sometimes without even telling anyone," Blake allowed. "Grey says this one hasn't been maintained in a long time."

"Thing is it's not really torn up either, from what I'm seeing," Grey added. "No one used this to make a mad dash away. At least, not as far as we looked down it."

Kai and Ruby exchanged a glance. Kai tilted her head a bit, and Ruby nodded, looking back at the two feline Faunus. "You guys go ahead and keep scouting out in front. Don't go further than your scrolls can track our Aura though, okay?"

The black-haired duo nodded and turned once again, making their way off down the path, disappearing around a bend a few moments later.

Leaving Ruby to finish getting everything together, Kai turned her attention back to Qrow, making her way over to him. Her eyes tracked down to his pocket, saw that there was a bit of a plastic sticking out of it, and none of them on the ground.

'Okay. Okay, this might not be too bad,' she thought as Qrow's eyes flitted down, obviously having realized what she saw. 'This is still salvageable. Just please Dragon don't let him say something like-'

"Hey, it's still a liquid and we might need those, right?" Qrow rasped, his shrug just a little too casual. "Besides, worse comes to worse we might need the disinfectant, since the stuff in the kits broke."

Silently, Kai held out her hand, palm up, her face a neutral mask.

"Oh, c'mon, kid, don't pull this on me," Qrow grumbled, his jaw working a little. "You and I have gone out and gotten smashed together, what exactly is the big deal?"

"The big deal is you bought boozepacks instead of food when we were going through a wasteland, Qrow," she whispered back.

He stared at her for long moments. Then his eyes slid away. His hand slipped into his pocket, came out holding a fistful of the packets, and set them in her hand.

"... Flask."

His head whipped up, something like anger flashing in his eyes.

And dying away into misery when he saw that hers were shimmering with unshed tears.

Qrow suddenly realized where he'd seen that particular look before... on the faces of people watching someone they cared about doing something they'd watched destroy someone else. It had been the look on Taiyang's face the day Ruby left for Beacon, when he knew she wasn't looking. Except this wasn't a life choice, it was just...

Without a word, his gut churning, he pulled out his flask and set it atop the plastic packs in her hand.

"Thank you," she murmured, turning away. The packs went in the first available pocket. His flask went into the inside chest pocket.

Qrow's heart went into his shoes.


	36. Interlude 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Qrow makes a decision.

He had failed a lot of people in his time.

It was, in some ways, what he was good at. Or at least felt like what he was good at. Everything that failed around him felt like his fault. Even he didn't know quite how far or how intricately his Semblance stretched, who the hell knew what it was doing sometimes.

"Bad luck". Just that. Just a vaguery. The idea he had inside of what he was.

Failure just seemed inevitable.

Maybe he'd been too hard on Oz.

He'd failed to draw his sister with him into something like a nobler life. He'd failed to honor Taiyang as a brother deserved to be honored. He'd failed to save Summer, even though Summer had gone off on her own, even though he'd had no way to know, still he'd failed her and her being dead was his fault.

He was sure.

He got used to looks of disappointment. The sadness, the resignation when he showed up a little too drunk, or got that way at an event. It hadn't been the first time he'd seen those looks on Ruby and Yang's faces, though maybe the first time they were that heavy.

He'd never made either of them cry, though.

Kai being disappointed in him was painful. He didn't even know when he started getting used to her looking at him with that smile in her eyes she didn't seem to give anyone else. Or when he'd begun to quietly, gradually accept the feeling growing in his heart.

But in her face he'd seen the sorrow. That she'd thought he was stronger than that. That she'd thought he wouldn't hurt her by putting her through something she'd seen in other men she'd thought lesser than him.

... Maybe it was time to stop being okay with putting those looks on other people's faces. Especially the people he cherished.

Maybe it was time for a change.


	37. Chapter 26

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the danger is in Kai's head and there are some things scarier than Grimm.

January 6, 244 AGW, 5:22 PM (Remnant 4482)

The group trudged through the snow, Yang slowly leading the way on the world's shiniest little snowplow, with Maria drifting along after her on the sideways hoverboard like the world's oddest three-day-old party balloon. 

Everyone was silent... partly because it seemed there was nothing to talk about, and partly because it seemed what there was to talk about was just a little too raw.

Yang suddenly drew up a halt, holding up a hand in warning... then clenching it (a little too firmly) to indicate no threat. "It's Blake and Grey."

The pair of Faunus emerged from the light haze that had built up in the area ahead, casting a cold white wash over the whole thing. They made their way over to where Ruby and Kai were walking at the head of the line, Blake rubbing her own upper arms as she said, "We found an abandoned settlement but there's something... odd."

"It's too perfect," Grey grumbled. "There's no signs of violence, nothing that says panicked fleeing, the only problems with it look weather and time related."

Ruby's expression turned worried. "Well... some of the settlements we came across in Anima were abandoned before they were even completed. Sometimes people just decided they didn't want to go through with it and went back to Mistral, I guess. How did this one look?"

"Pretty damn complete," Grey allowed with a glance over his shoulder. "Only thing it's missing is a border wall, but then I once heard they don't always do those out here... high winds can blow them down if you do wood ones."

"Speaking of the wind, it's getting worse," Qrow speaks up from a bit further back. "You see any sign of Grimm?"

"No," Blake said, rolling her shoulders. "It's actually... pretty peaceful around there."

Something about that obviously bothered Qrow, but then he said, "Look, with nothing more to warn us off than it being a bit creepy, we can't afford to pass up shelter. We'll for sure die out here if we don't get out of the snow and wind."

"... He's right." Kai nodded, confirmed with a glance at Ruby. "We'll have to try it. One sec though. Dee!" she called, turning her head.

"Yeah!" he answered, hurrying forward, as ever eager to try and find some way to make himself useful.

With a smooth motion Kai reached into her coat and unholstered her quickfire pistols, holding them up with the control side towards Dee. "Safety here. This switches them between armor piercing and stopping power." She then twirled them around to grip their barrels and proffered them.

"Hey, I can't take another Hunter's weapons," he protested, holding up his hands.

"Look if something's in there you're gonna need more than Redneck Katana there to handle it," she said wryly. "These aren't Huntress weapons, they're just plain weapons. Arm up."

"... Yeah, okay," he said a little heavily as he accepted them, tucking them into his belt. The reason was obvious... one more debt on his ledger.

With everyone save Maria armed (though Kai couldn't help but notice what looked like a recessed metal line on her cane, so maybe it was just "everyone"), they continued along the path, Blake and Grey leading the way along their gradually disappearing footprints in the snow.

Kai had to admit, though, as the dark shapes of the rows of buildings started to coalesce out of the haze, the closer they all got the worse she felt about this. Something just felt... wrong. She couldn't explain it, she just felt on edge, like there was this little scratchiness laid over it all. As Yang started navigating her bike through the tall gateway arches at the front, the redhead stopped, looking at the sign that had fallen to the side, resting half against the fencing that hardly seemed adequate when considering the Grimm.

Without really thinking she squatted and slid a hand along the elements-splintered wood, brushing away the snow that had gathered on it to reveal part of a name.

'Brunswick'. She thought.

"Kai?" Reese called.

Shaking her head, Kai quickly got up and moved to rejoin the others... then pressed her lips together. What... was that? It was like... it wasn't like tinnitus, but deeper, or... like when those old Earth viewers like the one she'd seen her and Ilia's song in, when they didn't get a signal, there was all this flickering, chattering, clacking, hissing.

"Gh." Kai half-staggered a step.

"Kai?" Ruby blinked, turning. Everyone looked tired, their faces a little sallow, steps heavy. Even Ruby looked like her silver eyes were a little less mirror shiny than usual. "Are you okay?"

"Ruby, do you... hear that?" the redhead muttered, putting a hand to her forehead.

"I... no, what do you mean?"

"I dunno, it's like I'm... hearing this skittery, popping noise but not even hearing it."

"Maybe your Aura's just low," the younger woman suggested a little halfheartedly, as if not quite up to being distracted from getting inside. "Check it."

"Yeah. Okay, good idea," Kai muttered, fishing out her scroll as the others continued trudging their way between the silent, dark, somehow dead-seeming buildings lining the front walk and leading towards the larger, almost looming main house. She tapped the Aura monitor quicklaunch button, saw the little icons of the current people nearby, searched out her own.

'Huh. Higher than I thought it'd be, considering,' she thought, though it was a little hard to think with that damned fucking hissing behind her ears.

Then it dipped a percentage point and came back up.

'Huh?' She stared at the screen, getting ready to just dismiss it as having been a fluke... when it did it again.

"Hey guys?" she called, her voice sounding strained and a little distant in her own ears. "Something's wrong."

Qrow had almost reached the front door, practically slumping towards it as if just eager to be inside and done with the day, done with everything. He turned back towards her, red eyes flat and exasperated, as were most of the others. "What?" he grunted.

She trudged forward to him, trying to steady herself, think through whatever scratchy feeling it was settling behind her eyes. "I'm hearing this... or I don't know if it's a feeling, or..." She pressed a palm against one of her eyes, squeezing both shut. "Look, whatever, the point is that I checked my Aura, and it keeps going down and then popping right back up."

"I mean... if you have a healing Semblance it probably affects how fast your Aura regenerates," Reese offered, her voice somehow slower and more languid than usual but without any of the breaks or clippings of her more serious or depressed moods. "It's a reflection of bodily integrity too. Maybe you're just losing Aura because of the weather."

"Everyone else's isn't going down that steadily!" Kai snapped, quickly trying to rein herself in when she saw Reese jerk back a little. "Sorry. Sorry. Just... nnnh fuck, this fuckin'  _ noise _ !" she hissed, pressing her palms to her forehead.

"Maybe it's in your head?" Dee suggested. When Kai shot him a glare, he quickly pointed to his face. "N-no, I mean, what if it's literally in your head? I mean, Aura sometimes makes a crackley noise when it's working, yours did when you healed up before. What if it's, like... inside your head?"

And here Kai had thought that a Grimm screaming the name of one of her friends in pure hatred was the scariest thing she was going to hear today.

"Wait, are you saying that something is attacking Kai's  _ brain _ ?" Blake whispered, her own eyes widening. "What kind of Grimm could do that?"

"I am afraid I know  _ exactly _ what kind," Ozma just almost snarled. "And it is nothing that we want anything to do with."

Qrow scowled deeply, but then glanced beyond the porch at the thickening snow in the cold mist. "Oz, is whatever it is more dangerous than spending the night out there?"

"... That very much depends on your point of view. However, pragmatically you are right... we might survive these creatures but we cannot survive the cold for certain. Alright, everyone, weapons out. Keep your blood as hot as you can, and focus on not letting yourself feel run down."

A second later Qrow kicked in the door, Ruby and Kai sweeping in behind him with rifle and pistol-ulak lowered, panning over the empty, dark, cold room within. Qrow slowly edged forward, Clockwork Dirge's own shooting mode angled ahead of him as he skimmed the next room, before calling, "Clear."

Everyone else filed in, Dee hauling the large supply bag and Grey quickly shutting the door behind him.

"You don't think it's... <Calmers>, do you?" Maria spoke up, Kai's translator nanos catching a slight edge to the word to show it had been spoken in another language.

"Yes. <Calmers>," Ozma repeated, scowling as he patted snow off of himself. "Atlas merely refers to them by the classification 'Cognitive Hazard Grimm'. To the rest of the world, they are known as the 'Apathy'."

"If they're so awful, why didn't we learn about them at the academy?" Weiss asked with a frown.

"'Cause if Beacon's courses are like Haven's, then 'Extinct Varieties of Grimm' is a third year class," Reese spoke up, rubbing her own upper arms. "And Apathy aren't supposed to exist anymore."

"Grimm can go extinct?" Kai asked, raising an eyebrow at this new interesting little tidbit, despite the looming terror gnawing at her soul (and apparently her brain).

"They can. We have indications, between certain renderings and, very rarely, types of physical evidence that there are Grimm species which no longer walk the world. In the Apathy's case, this was quite intentional," Ozma explained. "One of the first acts of inter-Kingdom cooperation in the wake of the Great War was a mass Apathy extermination... all of them that could be found were destroyed, in hopes of ridding the world of them forever. That is the extent to which they were feared."

"Shit," Kai muttered.

"Mister..." Ozma trailed off, then blinked, looking at Dee. "I am terribly sorry, sir, we seem to have neglected to get your full name."

"Uh, it's Twedele," Dee said with a blink, looking just a little pleased to be noticed. "Dee Twedele."

"Mister Twedele, was the train company so good as to stock their emergency kits with NRO injectors?"

Dee's face lit up. "Yeah! In fact I remember finding a plastic case to put 'em in since they were just loose in the wall kits!" he replied, turning to start hurriedly digging through the supply bag.

"Mind filling the non-Remnanteer in on what the hell NRO is?" Kai asked.

"Neuro-Reinforcement Oxyprotelaize. A medication that I myself had a hand in creating," Ozma explained, Dee giving him a confused look briefly before hauling out what looks like a small grey plastic toolbox. "It increases blood oxygenation and is designed to coat neurons and nerve endings, simultaneously stimulating them to correct certain chemical imbalances in the brain."

Kai processed that for a moment. Techno jargon she could do all day, and almost keep up with Reese. Medical less so, but she generally paid attention when her backalley medisurgeon Twitch talked, so a bit of puzzling and... she blinked. "Wait, are you saying that Remnant has a cure for  _ clinical depression _ ?"

"Not a cure," Ozma corrected, just a faint tinge of bitterness in his voice. Not one of his mistakes, then... just a failure. He watched as Dee opened the case and took out a bunch of yellow-wrapped injector pens, passing them out while reciting usage instructions so precise it was clear someone had coached him until he could say it exactly right. "A temporary allayment of symptoms. In the end, little more than the equivalent of the cold medication you might buy in any pharmacy. An acceptable stopgap for emergencies involving Grimm and, I had hoped, a valuable assistant to therapy and other treatments, but-"

"But when you can just press a button and start feeling normal again, it's really easy to start resenting your therapist for not just giving it to you all the time," Yang spoke up, clearly having a little trouble with her injector's wrapping with her hand not being 100%, and Blake valiantly keeping her eyes on her own injector. 

"Because that's what it does, it makes you feel normal," the blonde continued as she managed to reveal the plastic injector, then eyeing it... and finally sighing, glancing at her partner. "You're gonna need to do this." Tugging off the glove of her left arm, she went on. "It doesn't make you feel happy, it doesn't make you feel pleasurable, or psychadelic, it just makes you feel  _ normal _ . Hello lightness my old friend," she muttered as Blake, with some obvious hesitation, pressed the injector to the inside of Yang's wrist and depressed the button.

"And prolonged use has side effects," Grey picked up, pursing his lips as he looked at his own injector, twirling it in his fingers a few times before finally reaching up, tilting his head and brushing back his hair to inject his neck. "Addiction, obviously. Unnoticed loss of appetite. Pain insensitivity. Hyperactivity and/or attention deficit. Eventually, periods of dissociative euphoria that can wind up permanent if you don't back off."

He spoke with the air of someone that had felt some of it. And seen the rest happen.

And now Ozma had that 'mistake' look in Oscar's eyes. "I am so sorry, Mister Heliotrope," he whispered. "When I set out to create NRO, I could never have predicted the ways in which some segments of society would abuse it."

Grey's eyes flashed, and for just a moment there was a bit of Grey Bloody Claws there, a bit of rage, of hate, a snarl of 'The hell you couldn't!' rising in his throat. But it washed away... either of his own will or the influence of the drug. "Not your fault."

"A lot of people who suffer an extreme life event wind up going through an arc using NRO." Kai was surprised that this time it was Ruby talking in a soft voice as she pulled back her sleeve. "At first they actually start working with their therapist more. Then they start resenting their therapist for not giving them NRO all the time. Then they reject their therapist and go through withdrawal, and wind up plunging into untreated depression again before they can get better."

Noticing Yang staring at her, Ruby gave her sister a sad smile. "I did some reading. While JNPR and I were on the road."

Amidst the uncomfortable silence that followed, one of the still-wrapped injectors clattered back into the box.

"Allergic," Reese croaked.

"Miss Chloris," Ozma said, obviously doing his best to keep his tone gentle. "I know that some of what you've heard might be intimidating, or you might have seen someone have a bad experience or even had one on your own, but in this instance-"

"I'm not bullshitting you because I don't want to take it I'm  _ allergic _ !" Reese snapped, her fists clenching and head lowering.

Ozma blinked. "That... should not be possible. We worked  _ extensively _ to insure that NRO would be as hypoallergenic as possible. We estimated that less than one millionth of the population would ever develop an allergy."

"Well heeeeeey look who's the lucky lotto winner huh?" Reese blurted back at him, mockingly making a double victory sign on either side of her eyes and giving a short, bitter laugh. "In case you haven't noticed I'm not exactly a pinnacle of genetics here Oz I'm a third year in Huntress school and I look like this. I've got a genetic hormonal imbalance that besides keeping me this lovely perky trim and flat self for the rest of my life also makes me allergic to a fuckton of stuff. Most medical birth control a lot of cold medicines every migraine medication there is all five major surgical anesthesias and artificial blood for a start."

Weiss winced. "You're allergic to artificial blood? Shouldn't you have a medic alert bracelet?"

Reese stared at her, and without taking her eyes away lifted her right hand and pulled her glove up, revealing the scroll-scannable datablock tattooed on her inner wrist, 'Medical Info' in bright letters below it.

"It got too heavy," she said flatly.

Before Kai could fight past her heart breaking and seeming to intensify the static in her head, Grey stepped forward, resting a hand on Reese's shoulder. "Then I'll just have to look out for you. Stick close and let's do this together."

For a moment there was anger, a flash of resentment on Reese's face... but then it slowly settled into relief, her head bobbing as she raised a hand up to rest on his.

* * *

"Ilia and I were partners, but Reese and Grey really weren't. We were all a team, but only two of us were partners, and I'd somehow never thought how that might feel for them. I guess if anything good came out of being in that near-literal hellhole, it was that those two started to gel and rely on each other.

"I found out later that Reese had told Ilia about some of her allergies... the artificial blood, the surgical anesthesia, and NRO. Just so that someone on the team would know in case she got hurt and couldn't tell us herself. I guess she didn't tell the rest of us because even if she'd made her peace with being weird, she refused to make her peace with being fragile.

"So she didn't tell us, and we had all just assumed that hey, she was short and flat and some people were like that, no big deal. She got to be... if not normal, not fragile, in the eyes of her friends.

"Chalk up her first sacrifice for our mission."

* * *

"Miss Sterling," Ozma prompted.

"Oh, yeah, right." Kai shook her head, having lost focus entirely too easily, and tossed her hood back, brushing back some crimson hair to inject the side of her neck.

Slowly, the feeling of clawing, chittering static in her head receded. The skittish, jumpy sensation she'd been feeling ever since they drew within sight of the settlement settled down, eased into the back of her mind, like a memory.

None of this was a big deal.

She was Kai Sterling. Mercenary, Huntress, tough as nails street punk. This was what she did every day. This was just her job. Why fuss over it? It wasn't a problem. It was all normal.

'Shit.'

* * *

"I have been exposed to a lot of drugs in my time, both medical and recreational. I mean, hell, I wouldn't have said I was precisely  _ friends _ with Moore, a person whose entire life completely and utterly revolved around getting high, but we were friendly and playing guinea pig for a new concoction of hers was always a quick way to earn a few creds. And if she slipped me a little two-thumbs bag of glowdust or some wakepills or a few prerolled Leaf wraps then that was her just being nice, as we both saw it.

"I'd always managed to avoid getting addicted to anything but caffeine and nicotine, but yes let's say I had sampled a lot of medications for both fun and practicality over the course of my life.

"NRO was the only one that absolutely scared the shit out of me.

"Because Yang was right, it didn't make you feel anything but normal. I mean, it didn't even turn you into Super Unflappable Huntress... you  _ could _ still feel all your normal feelings, it's just that they all felt normal too. You got a little scared, but that was fine, it was normal... so you didn't get any more scared, you just... acknowledged you were scared and went about your life.

"Normally.

"Yeah. Think about that. It'll sink in eventually just how batshit fucking terrifying being able to press a button and feel normal whenever you wanted, even though you knew it would eventually destroy you, really is."

* * *

"Well I don't see why we're going to bother with these things if everyone's going to be all depressed anyway," Maria declared, though Kai noticed from a shift in her parka that indicated she'd tucked her injector away rather than using it.

"There is one way we can continue to confirm if it is the Apathy," Ozma spoke up. "Miss Belladonna, Mister Heliotrope, would you be so good as to search the house? Do not leave each other's sight, and fire your weapons should you find anything. In the unlikely event of finding a survivor, I assume you understand you may fire into the floor or ceiling," he added dryly.

Grey nodded, waiting until Kai had moved over to Reese's side before joining Blake, the two of them slipping off, seeming to disappear into the darkness further into the house as if it had suddenly swallowed them up.

"I should get started on the replacement part for Yang's arm," Reese murmured, fishing in her bag and pulling out a half-disassembled scroll, settling into a chair after she'd passed Kai a flashlight. A few moments later, she added in a whisper aimed just at the redhead, "Sorry, Kai. There wouldn't have been any little half-alien hybrids anyway."

* * *

"Just in case you're curious, your heart can still feel like it's breaking on NRO.

"It just feels normal when it does."

* * *

"So if these things are supposed to be extinct, how'd they get here?" Yang asked with a frown, folding her arms.

"As we've all no doubt experienced at some point in the last few years, what is supposed to be and what actually is are often two entirely different concepts," Ozma allowed with a bob of the head. Turning to head further into the house, he eyed the bookshelf, running his fingertips along some of the spines. "It would appear that the owner of this house, and therefore logically the leader of this settlement, was quite the historian himself. If I were to guess... he may have deliberately sought out and brought the Apathy here."

"Deliberately-?!" Dee spluttered.

" _ Why _ on  _ Remnant _ would anyone deliberately bring Grimm to a settlement, let alone these... things?!" Weiss said with a scowl. "Who would do that?!"

"At a glance, someone who spent their money hiring the best contractors and buying the best materials the Kingdoms had to offer," Qrow grunted, strolling over to rap his knuckles on one of the door frames. "Look at this. Rubes, any of those settlements you pass through look as good as this?"

"No," Ruby allowed slowly after taking a look around. "Some of them were really nice... especially the parts of Kuroyuri that were still standing... but this looks more like something you'd see in inner Vale."

"Or on Patch," Yang added with a nod.

"Right," Qrow muttered, eyeing the fireplace while rubbing his chin with one hand, the other on his hip. "So this idiot spends all of his money hiring the best builders and buying the best materials, thinking that if he builds his village solidly enough maybe that will be enough. By the time they've got all the buildings done he's running low on cash... maybe he even meant to build a wall, hell I bet if we waited until spring we'd be able to find a cement foundation ringing the property that'd be the envy of Argus. But by the time he got the village done, he's out or nearly out of money... not enough to buy good Grimm-killing weapons, or enough to buy a good early warning net."

"So," Maria murmured, her croaky voice filling the room. "He looked at his history books, saw what the Apathy could do, and decided he'd find some to hide away somewhere on the property so that they'd deaden the emotion of the residents. Keep them calm. Keep them placid. Below notice of the Grimm... and not caring that he'd mismanaged all their funds in setting up a proper settlement."

About the time Reese was finishing installing the kludged-together compensator into Yang's arm, Grey and Blake returned.

"We found the bedrooms," the golden-eyed woman said. "One of the beds was empty. The others had people in them... dead people." She looked mildly disturbed... but only mildly. "They've been dead a long time."

"No signs of a struggle, no marks on the body, they just laid there. Either went in their sleep or... just didn't care they were dying," Grey added, though there was more bitterness in his voice. Kai noticed he seemed particularly eager to return to Reese's side.

"And we found a dead Huntress," Blake added, wincing a little. "But not in one of the beds. You should see this."

The group made its way further into the house, though Reese called a pause as they passed through one room, making her way over to a panel. Fiddling with her tools, she opened it up, finding a recessed handle inside and pumping it several times until it clicked and held, before replacing the panel and flicking switches.

The lights in the room sputtered a little and then came on, a few burnt-out bulbs creating weird little almost-patches of dimness amidst the light. The air became slightly heavy with the smell of dust, but after a moment started to warm perceptibly. It still couldn't quite chase off the chill of knowing something was out there, even with the normalizing firmness in their brains.

"She's in there," Blake said, pointing at the walk-in pantry beyond the kitchen.

Kai flipped on the lightswitch as Ruby, Qrow, and Ozma stepped inside, Ruby flinching back a bit from the sight of the desiccated corpse laying sprawled across a pair of cellar doors, a rifle with a long blade attached under the barrel still clasped in withered hands. Easy enough to see why Blake had made the call it was a Huntress... the shiny black jacket with its bright neon green trim and markings, the hex-patterned almost rubber-textured pants, and the overly-strappy boots all screamed of the nonconformist nature of the trade.

Scattered around the body were numerous injectors, small medical vials, and syringes. Qrow knelt, picking up a broken bottle and turning it to look at the label. "NRO," he observed, somewhat unnecessarily, Ozma wincing. "She either ran out and the Apathy drained her will to fight back or leave, or-"

"Or she hit the state of dissociative euphoria and didn't care about moving, same difference," Grey picked up, frowning... but not at Ozma, even as the immortal bowed his head. "Red, what's that on her wrist? I couldn't see it before, in the dark."

Kai could barely see it with the light on, but after a moment's searching there was indeed something very faintly shiny and black peeking out from below the jacket's sleeve. Crouching, she delicately lifted the corpse's arm, more out of sensitivity to Ruby's clear discomfort and sadness than any innate respect for the dead.

See enough corpses and they started just being corpses after a while.

Still, as she pushed back the sleeve, Kai felt just a little jolt go through her as she revealed the sleek black wrist comm... identical to the ones she'd seen rows of a few weeks ago back at 3B. "This wasn't a Huntress," Kai said, leaning back so Grey could see. "This was a Guild merc."

"Guild?" Qrow lifted an eyebrow as he stood. "That thing you and Grey belong to?"

"The Guild of Interdimensional Professionals, Specialists, and Enforcers, yeah. The guy that built this place must have really been into his 'forbidden lore', he found whatever reference to GIPSE that the other couple of contacts Remnant has had used and hired himself a Guild mercenary instead of a Huntress," Kai muttered as she worked to get the comm off. It wasn't easy, it was specifically designed to be hard for someone to take it off of you without your cooperation.

Of course it was designed to be possible when you were dead, too. So she just had to find the right way to pull.

"Why go to the extra trouble and expense to hire a Guild merc instead of just hiring a Huntsman like Dee here?" Grey asked, thumbing aside at the big man, and then almost visibly biting back whatever he was about to add next, like 'Only competent'.

"Uhhhh, I don't know what this 'Guild' thing is you guys are talking about," Dee muttered from back near the door. "But it's not tied to the Huntsman licensing system or the academies, right?" At Grey's nod, the big man shrugged. "That's probably why then. Huntsmen are required to report every job they take to the license bureau to register themselves as having taken a contract. Preferably before, but after if necessary. A job like this..." He glanced around, then visibly shuddered. "Before. Definitely before. I would have made sure a lot of people knew where I was going. The licensing bureau, Dudley, our teammates from back at Haven, my dad, my uncle, every-damn-body."

"So would any half-reputable Huntsman, for a screwy job like trying to guard a quasi-legal settlement or wrangle a Grimm into captivity," Qrow acknowledged with a grunt, nodding as he rose to his feet. "And the illustrious founder probably didn't want Atlas or Mistral meddling with his glorious little new kingdom out here. So his options were to hire a  _ dis _ reputable Hunstman or Huntress, which I guess even he was smart enough to know better than to do when he was out in the middle of nowhere with a lot of people and expensive stuff..."

"... Or he looks for another option. He contracts with a reputable mercenary from another dimension." Kai glanced at Dee as his eyes went wide. "Yeah, I'll clue you in on a few things eventually, big man, you've earned it. For now though I think I've found this merc's last log entry, let's see what she had to say at the end."

She turned and stood, angling the comm forward to project its holographic function as she accessed the log entry. The head and shoulders of a woman appeared, almost as lifelike as if she'd been partially resurrected to float in the air amidst the Huntsmen and Huntresses, displaying pale blue eyes with X-shaped pupils and faintly flickering bioluminescent green hair, the light gone from the pallid corpse behind them. She had deep bags under her eyes and sunken cheeks... though from the exhaustion in her voice those were most likely not natural traits of her species.

" _ They don't try to bash their way through as long as I'm actually here... finally figured out I didn't even need to be trying to guard the door, just needed to be here on it. They're cowards... pretty weak. Though they don't seem it when you go up against them sober. I think at close proximity they mess with your head even more... make you think you hit them when you didn't. On the NRO they died pretty easily, but... there's a lot of them down there. Way more than I thought. I killed the Alphas in the barn but I think some of the ones down below are... changing. Becoming replacements. They seemed even more coordinated after that. I stopped trying to go down and kill any more when I saw that. _ " 

The woman in the hologram closed her eyes, the last words having apparently let her admit to herself that she was making something to be seen after her death... before she continued, seeming to have settled on doing just that. " _ I didn't think the job was a big deal when I took it. Monster-wrangling is my specialty. 'Grimm', it's just another wild animal, right? But these... these aren't animals. They're red inside and if you burn them or cut them sometimes you even see something like muscle but it's like... _ " 

She took a deep breath, closing her eyes, the pale blue of them a bit more haunted when she opened them. " _ Looking at them, it was like this one bad trip I had when I was back home on the ship, laying staring up at the space between stars, and it was like the Black tried to reach out and swallow me. ... I think that was the day I decided to join the Guild and stick to planets. _ " She let out a short, bitter laugh. " _ Look how that worked out. _ "

She paused, looking down, her arms moving below the point where they were recorded, visible only by the shifts of her shoulders. " _ Speaking of trips... nh. The packages from back when I was using the nice injectors said that there were side effects to continued use, but mostly my teeth itch, my guts turn to water, and my fingers go numb. Guess this stuff wasn't meant for Korixians, but apparently our brain chemistry is similar enough to standard humans that I get the 'good' effects. ... It gets real bad if I stop taking it. _ " 

She looked up and directly at the camera... or rather, directly at Kai, since she was holding the comm. " _ So I took a monster-wrangling job. Guy says that these things will keep his people calm, and that keeps them safe from the other monsters. But I look at these things and they're... nightmares. Physical nightmares. I'm doing these sensor readings on them, and I wanna piss myself what I'm seeing. I tell him, let's only take one of the smaller ones, that will be enough to take the edge off of everyone, we can build a way more secure facility for it much easier and that'll be that. But no... he wants the two biggest ones, the 'mated pair'. He's looking at them like they're livestock or something. _ " 

She looked down. " _ I'm a good merc. ... I thought I was. So I did my job. I listened to the client. ... I caught him his mated pair. _ "

" _ We closed them up in the big barn while no one was around... like that would really hold them forever, _ " the mercenary continued after several moments of silence. " _ I've already got this sick, cold feeling in my lexxa as we walk back through the settlement and I'm looking around at all these people, and I'm thinking, they're all gonna die. This guy is gonna get them killed. But they don't know, he's just smiling and telling them everything's okay now even if he's not telling them why, he just says they're gonna start feeling a lot better. They're gonna feel safe. ... Sick bastard. I tell him we need to do a perimeter check, make sure there's no openings, no place the rest of the pack could penetrate if they follow, but he says he's tired, he'll help me do it tomorrow. Well fuck him, I leave him and I go do it now. I can't stand to look at his people anyway... their smiling faces, looking relaxed already, how much they trust him. ... That... that little girl, she... she told me she'd never seen someone with such pretty eyes... _ "

Not a single one of them was strong enough to keep their eyes on the dead woman's image as she sobbed.

" _ Shit... shit, the stuff isn't working anymore, not as good... I'm almost out anyway, _ " she said after a few moments, with the group looking back to see her wiping mostly dry eyes. 'She must have been dehydrated,' Kai thought, even though there are unopened bottles of wine and juice not that far from where the body lay. She wondered if the merc's legs had even worked at that point. " _ Gotta calm down. ... 'Cause yeah, these things feed on it... they eat up your negative emotions like jumbana at Dragontide. _ " 

Kai felt a sick shock run through her.

" _ I guess that's why I got jumped by those wolflike ones while I was out making my little misery-patrol, them and that big thing with the horns and the wings. Tough to handle... managed to take them out, but it took a long time. Time I get back and treat my wounds it's the middle of the night, and I can't do much but collapse into bed. Could barely drag myself out of it the next morning and go finish my perimeter sweep, close up some of the openings I found... thought I'd just fought harder than I realized before, but no, my body was heavy 'cause the things, these... Apathy... the pack had already come down below, I'd actually sealed them in. I found them in the tunnels when I did a check of the cellar and I tried to fight... when it didn't work at first I shook that asshole awake, made him get some of the others up. They told me about the NRO, that it could push off the effects. So we took some, and we fought. But it was hard down there, there were too many nooks and crannies for them to hide in, even with the stuff we were too scared. We had to go in, fight, and withdraw when the stuff wore off, and all the while everyone else is still just sleeping, or laying there in bed staring at the ceiling like they don't care about getting up. And bit by bit people stop going back in to fight, and instead going back to bed, one by one, until I'm the only one left. And now all I can do is lay here, feeling myself wither away bit by bit, because at least that way they stay down there, stay inside. Don't get out and do this to someone else. _ "

Her eyes pinched and her mouth twisted, and it was obvious she'd have been weeping again if she had the water in her. " _ Don't let them get out, _ " she pleaded openly, the last of her emotional armor gone. " _ Don't let them get out. I don't care what you are, mercenary or Huntress or sinner or saint... for the love of everything, I'm begging you, don't let them get out. _ " And then the image skittered and dispersed as the file ended.

In the silence that stretched afterward, Kai turned the comm over in her hands, finding the screen again, staring at the name glowing in green letters on it. Only once she was sure she would never forget it did she tuck the comm into her coat's inner pocket before turning, kneeling down. She kissed the tips of her index and middle fingers, reached out to touch them gently over the empty sockets of the corpse's eyes.

"Kayaa Morgana, Crystal Dragon draw you home to him and shine his eyes upon you. May the scale that becomes your home be vast and bright, may it be close to the scales of those you love, may the stars blaze through it on you always." Then she pressed her fist to her bowed head, completing the rest of the prayer in silence.

Only once Kai rose from her kneeling position did anyone speak. "What do we do now?" Ruby asked softly.

"For now, Miss Rose," Ozma answered with heavy solemnity, casting Oscar's green-gold gaze down at the body. "We allow this young woman to continue the watch she so nobly served to protect a world that was not her own. And we withdraw to decide how best to carry out her final wish."


	38. Interlude 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which it is observed that something rare and precious has been lost.

"Most Guild mercs aren't very good people.

"I mean, plenty of them are, sure. There's plenty of people who are decent and true, and more than a few wannabe heroes.

"Aurora Jitan. There's a kind and decent person. And a major wannabe hero. Hero complex, I'd even say. Honestly I think if I'd ever stopped being so fucking tsundere to her we would have been amazing friends. But Aurora was a little  _ too _ eager to be a hero, at least to my jaded eyes. I always worried that I was more of a mission to her than a person. I was being an asshole.

"Texas. A very quiet, very stoic woman, never said much. Very pretty, very adorable canine ears and big bushy tail, and very uninterested in being anyone's friend. And yet she always had a mealbar to offer or a spare credit when I bumped into her, because she knew I was short. The Guild was a side job for her, something she did to help fund this organization she called Rhodes Island that she worked with. But then she was still a kind and decent person under the flat expression.

"Just that for every Aurora or Texas there were probably a hundred people that would have shot a saint in the face for lunch money.

"I think the point I'm trying to make is... the Guild itself, the organization, was absolutely amoral. It had no preference towards doing good or bad. It facilitated everything... want to hire a slaver to round up a bunch of sentient livestock? They'll let you list it. Want to hire someone to free every slave on your planet? They'll let you list it. The mercs that made up the guild were, by and large, just everyday people and mixed in with those everyday people were some real gems.

"And every time we lost a gem the Guild became a slightly worse place.

"Kayaa Morgana... I don't know what you were like before you set foot on Remnant. I don't know what you'd done, what jobs you'd taken, what life you lived.

"But I know the Guild was a worse place for losing you."


	39. Chapter 27

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Kai and Reese shower together, and then Kai gets penetrated in an unfun way. But no, not that way either.

January 6, 244 AGW, 8:04 PM (Remnant 4482)

"We have to kill the Apathy," Qrow murmured as he stared into the flames crackling in the fireplace. "All of them."

"But how?" Dee asked, not sounding like he disagreed, but like he just couldn't see how any group that involved him could possibly be up to such a task. "She said there were a lot of them, and that the caverns down below were basically perfect for them to fight in and awful for us."

At some point Ozma had turned things back over to Oscar, the boy having been getting almost as frightened of how long he'd been spending on the inside as everything else, but he seemed to be shouldering up pretty well. Kai wondered if it was the NRO or just all the confidence others had shown in him lately. Dee and Maria had been given an extremely abbreviated explanation of Oscar and Ozma's situation... clearly no need to go into the whole 'we're off to fight the immortal queen of evil' thing, especially just then.

"Ozma says that if we can take out the Alphas, it might disrupt the rest of them long enough for us to take them out, or at least make a dent in them." 

"But Kayaa said that she killed the Alphas in the barn and it didn't make a difference, it just caused two of the pack below to turn into new Alphas," Kai noted, glancing up from very carefully and very respectfully servicing the rifle she'd picked up from the pantry.

"He thinks that she most likely waited too long after she killed them," the boy replied, sounding apologetic for the seeming criticism. "It was probably a huge relief when the Apathy stopped, even for a little while," Oscar continued, apparently speaking for himself now as he gave a wince. "I bet she couldn't help but take the time to rest, and by the time she made her next venture down there it was too late."

"If these Grimm are developed enough to be cowards, it means they're developed enough to guard their Alphas," Maria chimed in, cybereyes half-lidding in a look of consternation. "They won't be waiting for us at the top of the cellar steps, they'll be lurking somewhere below, with plenty of their pack all around them."

"I could rig something up to blow out the caverns," Reese suggested. "It'd probably take most of Weiss's Dust supply but I could whip up a bomb that'd fill that entire cave network."

"Hey, you're talking about blowing us up too, yanno," Dee objected. "Cavern systems out here are never just short little things, they honeycomb, I bet this entire settlement is sitting on top of a series of them, especially if these Apathy things were able to spread it to everyone and not just the main house."

"Yeah well that may be what it takes," Reese answered, her voice a little brittle but her eyes hard as she looked at him. "Donchathink?"

Dee hesitated... and Kai could almost see Kayaa's message replaying in his head, the sight of her body slumped on that door in his mind. In that moment something changed in him, his back straightening, his big, dopey face going dead serious.

"If that's what it takes I'll walk down there with the bomb and press the button myself," he vowed, without a bit of bluster. Then he winced and slumped a little. "I'd just, y'know... like to go through a couple of other options first, y'know?"

"He's not wrong," Qrow admitted. "Ideally we should find a way to kill, or even just  _ survive _ the Apathy for the next couple of days, and stay here if we can. Even if his buddy doesn't manage to kick Atlas or the company in the ass and get them out here on a rescue mission, eventually JNPR will manage something. Sheltering in this place is a damn sight better than trying to slog through the snow to Argus."

"The food supplies are mostly intact, it's even still got running water and heat," Grey added, folding his arms over his chest. "Reese and I took a look at the generator, its Lightning Dust crystals are a little worn down but they should have at least a week in them, and we can always dip into Weiss's supply for more if we need."

"It's not that I mind sharing but I do wish everyone would stop being quite so free with my Dust supply," Weiss muttered, albeit loudly enough for the whole room to hear. "I know my name is Schnee but that doesn't mean I can just grow new Dust crystals out of my skin any time I please."

"Huh, really?" Grey quirked an eyebrow, grinning. "I heard you crapped it out, actually. Hey," he grunted with a glance down as Blake thumped him on the side of the leg from where she was sitting on the floor nearby.

"Anyway," Yang said, clearly trying to hurry on as Weiss went solid red in the face and looked half a moment from ripping loose with a truly epic rantrum. "As eager as I usually am for a fight, as I've had it reiterated to me again and again you've also gotta know when not to fight. It sounds like the best option would be to just wait it out as long as we can, and tell the military when they show up so they can handle it." She paused, then grimaced. "Except-"

"Except I can't take NRO so by the time they get here I'll be in a coma," Reese whispered from where she was sitting on the hearth, hands resting on the edge of it, green eyes downturned.

"... Don't take this the wrong way, kid," Qrow said slowly, his voice gentle. "But how bad's the allergic reaction?"

"Migraine. Hives. Shortness of breath. Severe cramps. Mild dementia. Hallucinations," the small woman rattled off without looking up. Then one corner of her mouth quirked up in a humorless grin as she looked up at Qrow. "But I also get super ticklish so I guess that could at least give you guys something to do."

"Right." Qrow pushed off the mantle. "So our options are to fight or leave."

"Well we're not leaving tonight, in that," Kai noted, giving a point towards the window which was steadily getting its own pile of snow outside it.

"We could at least just spend the night here," Dee suggested. "Get cleaned up, get fed, some sleep... if we can," he added with a wince. "I mean, the crashed train's a pretty good marker pointing right at this place, not like the military won't be able to find it again. Pretty sure they'd act on getting rid of something they call a 'cognitive hazard'. We can just tell them once we make it to Argus."

Since she was feeling a bit sour already, Kai was the one to say, "And what if we don't make it to Argus?"

Everyone chewed on that for a bit, before Ruby looked over at the fireplace. "Reese, how are you feeling right now?"

"Depressed. I guess I'll blame it on the Apathy huh?" The green-haired Huntress took a deep breath, then nodded. "I'm handling it. Knowing it's mostly coming from an outside source helps. I wish really hard my Mo-"

She flinched. The words 'Momma Lion', usually a comfort, were just too raw and vulnerable right now. "That Arslan was here 'cause she has some acupuncture and massage techniques that are great for mental stability. I think I'd definitely be okay for a day or so at the least so everyone can rest and maybe if I can make myself like center and meditate it'll help."

"Alright. As hard as it may be, we'll try to get some sleep. In the morning we'll see what the weather's doing." Qrow paused, then sniffed himself. And made a face. "Also I guess we should shower. But, considering what's going on, people will have to go to the bathroom in pairs." He glanced around, snorting at the various blushes. "You don't actually have to get  _ in _ the shower with each other, y'know."

But why waste water?

And Kai had to admit, absolute fucking moron that he might have been, the community leader had a good eye for showers. It was double-wide, with sliding glass doors, and the faucets were up top for a 'rain' style effect. The water was warm, the lights were steady, it was almost easy to forget you were naked in a house from Hell.

Reese hadn't bothered to hide that she was looking at Kai's body as they showered, the way her boobs jiggled, or following the trail of suds down her back and across the curves of her ass. She wasn't  _ ogling _ exactly, but definitely enjoying, and every time Kai caught her looking, she just grinned shamelessly. Kai, for her part, returned the favor, appreciating her sleek nude form, glistening beneath the streams of water in the light, steam rising around her currently limp green hair, soap suds traveling down her almost flat chest and the lines of her pert little ass.

But she guessed she knew something new about that slim body.

Kai had been across so many worlds and met so many species she hadn't really given Reese's build a second thought. Once Reese told her she was actually going on twenty, Kai had just accepted it as some natural variation. But it wasn't, and despite having learned to love herself, somewhere underneath there it clearly still bothered her a bit.

"You're thinking about it, aren't you?" Reese suddenly spoke up as she began sudsing up her hair, turning off towards the wall.

"... Just 'cause I know now," Kai admitted. "Reese, the only thing it makes me care about is how you're feeling about it. That's all it means to me. You know I'd never look down on you or pity you."

"It's hard to focus on what I ought to know right now," the small woman admitted quietly.

Kai stepped forward, pressed up against Reese's back, draped her arms around her friend. Despite the warmth, the steam, the nudity, the earlier appreciative glances, there was nothing sexual about this at the moment... just comfort and needing to be there for someone.

"Y'know, I kind of have a thing for birds," Kai said after a moment, starting to collect water in her hand and gently wash it across Reese's hair, bit by bit clearing out the suds. The petting Reese's head while she did it was purely incidental. "Ico used to take me to this big aviary type thing on the Guildhall. She was supposed to be taking me so I could watch the hawks and eagles swoop and dive, learn to put it into my swordwork. And I did. But, y'know... she wound up making sure I got to look at pretty much whatever I wanted. It always healed my heart."

She rested a hand atop Reese's head, bowing her own head over her a bit. "Of course once she was sold and we left the Guildhall, that was all over and done with. And Makarzia had already managed to kill every bird it had centuries ago. Every bird but one. The sparrows. ... Never understood why people didn't seem to like sparrows on other worlds. They definitely didn't like the ones on Makarzia. They weren't puffy or round or cute, they were all... scrawny and oily and always looking like they were one cough from falling over and dying.

"But they didn't. The bad water couldn't kill them, the cold couldn't kill them, the smog couldn't kill them. They lived in sheer defiance of everything that tried to kill them because they may have been tiny and scrawny but they were the toughest damn things on the planet, and I loved the shit out of them."

Reese spent a moment in silence, then turned around and grinned wanly up at her. Her face looked somehow lonely without its usual black stripes. "Is that bullshit even true?"

Kai grinned, reached a hand up to brush her thumb across Reese's cheek. "Every bit of bullshit I say is as true as you need it to be, Sparrow."

* * *

"They'd told her when she was thirteen that her chances of ever carrying a child to term were 'negligible'.

"That's a hell of a thing to tell a thirteen-year-old that was just getting into boys and girls. I guess they wanted her to know as soon as the tests came back, so that she could adjust her life plans. Understand her options. Realize the precautions she needed to take, considering the birth control allergies. All that.

"But it's a hell of a thing to tell a thirteen-year-old. Even I knew that.

"She told me about it but never about how she learned to deal with that, what her thoughts were. I think some things are too private to be spoken of even between the best of friends.

"She'd known pretty much all her life that her daredeviling could get her killed. Moreso than other kids. She was allergic to artificial blood on a planet that used the stuff almost exclusively now. If she wound up needing surgery she might have had to go under without anesthesia. When she got migraines from too many late nights staring through magnifiers at machinery she was working on, she just had to tough through them.

"And she didn't let a damn bit of it stop her from living her best life.

"Reese Chloris. My Sparrow. I loved the shit out of her."

* * *

As much as she would have liked to change into the comfy oversized sleepwear she'd stolen from Reese's teammate back at Haven, for one thing there were a lot of really nasty Grimm lurking about, and for another her clothing bag was sort of headed to Argus with JNPR. She hoped they remembered to grab it when they got off, she wasn't going all the way back to Haven to steal another.

So when she got back, she paused, seeing that Team RWBY, having showered earlier, had already sacked out and that Dee was apparently being allowed to stand watch over them. Qrow and Oscar nodded to the two of them, heading up after, Kai briefly wondering if they'd left any hot water.

'Hell I bet this fucker went tankless,' Kai thought, glancing at the picture of the large group of people arranged in front of the gates. All dead now. Sleeping forever.

She made a bit of a face and turned away, both from the picture and the morbid thoughts.

"We probably better stay awake until those four wake up," she suggested quietly to Grey and Reese as they made their way over to the other side of the room.

"Hmph. Well the Baoula girl had a good idea earlier, talking about meditating," Maria spoke up from the chair she'd claimed. "Why don't you all settle down here and listen to your elders like she seems to have the good sense to?"

Kai exchanged a glance with Grey, and both shrugged before moving to settle in front of Maria's chair, folding their legs, Reese settling easily into the same position despite the fact that it obviously felt a little hard for her to move.

"Alright now. Close your eyes and... breathe," Maria directed, croak of a voice growing quieter, more gentle. "Breathe. Let the breathing be calm, don't force it to be," she continued, the shutters sliding down over the lenses of her eyes. "Your breathing knows how to be calm, so let it be. Your mind knows how to be calm, so let it be. You may think it doesn't, but it does. Let it find the calm places it has already known. Breathe. Let the life force of Remnant fill you and replenish your Aura."

One of the shutters rolled up a bit as Grey snorted. "Oh? Something funny, pretty boy?"

"Sorry ma'am," Grey blurted, apparently out of reflex, before grimacing a little. Honestly Kai was impressed how Maria managed to make him do that. "Just... my Aura's mine. One of the only things that was," he added a little defensively. "It's not Remnant's."

"Mm, I see why you've been able to develop your Aura to such an extent, pretty boy, taking personal pride in it like that. And you're right, your Aura is yours." Maria shifted just a little, once more positioning her hands on her knees and sliding the lid of her cybereye down. "But that doesn't mean Remnant doesn't have its own. The First Huntress passed the gift of awakened Aura down to all of the rest of us, and who do you think awakened hers, hm?" At the lack of answer, she said, "That's right, Remnant itself. The world has its own expression of energy and soul, what do you think Dust really is, hm? Just rocks in the ground? So your Aura is yours, but it's also connected to everyone else's, and to the planet's. Now... breathe, let the breathing be calm..."

Kai couldn't help herself, she peeked an eye open. "What about me? I'm not from Remnant but I have an Aura."

"Oh for heaven's sake, this is supposed to be meditation, not Q&A!" Maria huffed, but cleared her throat and straightened her little old shoulders a bit. "That may be, but when you were Awakened, the one who did it gave you a small piece of their Aura to do so, connecting you into the chain that leads all the way back to the First Huntress. 

"For some of us, the fact that the one who awakened us will always be with us is the greatest blessing and joy that we will carry with us for the rest of our lives," she continued, apparently unable to help smiling warmly at the gentle look of peace and happiness that came across Reese's face, though the petite woman's eyes were still closed. "... For some, it is a burden we will carry with us to the end of our days," the old woman croaked softly, her glowing cyan eyes having traveled to take in Grey's slumped head. "But. Whichever it is. Each of us is a link in a chain. A chain that leads back to the same source. The first Huntress. And Remnant. Now seriously, close your eyes, the blind woman says so!"

Kai snickered, just a little, then tried to settle herself, center. Let her breathing be calm, let herself be calm. Ico had tried to teach her meditation, of course, but it had never really stuck. But things had changed quite a bit since then.

'Relax. Breathe. Just let it flow. Let my Aura replenish from the planet, open myself,' she thought, trying to relax herself, open herself to the energy flow.

And something reached out of it and grabbed her.

In an instant it hauled her down out of her own body, wrapping around her in numerous gripping hands that were nothing like human, pulling her into some deep darkness where she was only looking up, all her screams silenced, her struggles in vain as something infinitely dark and cruel surged up past her like some predator leviathan with its kill already in sight.

Slowly, the redhead rose to her feet, silently turning and starting to walk across the room. "Kai?" Reese said with a blink, turning her head.

Booted feet trod slowly, softly across the floor, coming to stand in front of where Team RWBY was sleeping beside each other. In front of one member in particular. A hand came up, gripped, slid back down.

"Mnh?" Perhaps disturbed by the motion as anything else, Ruby Rose lifted her head and opened her silver eyes, looking a little blearily up at the smirking face of her red-eyed friend, obviously out of it from only just having gone to sleep. "Kai? What is it?"

Then she blinked as Red Legacy's sheath retracted.

"Time to die," Salem murmured with Kai's mouth.


	40. Chapter 28

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which there is a wicked witch.

January 6, 244 AGW, 8:34 PM (Remnant 4482)

Kai screamed into the darkness she'd been pulled down into as the monster inhabiting her body swung her weapon up and brought it down towards the shocked face of Ruby Rose.

Though the rest of her team had jolted awake at Ruby's yelp of shock, it was not Myrtenaster, Celica, or Gambol Shroud that blocked the strike, but a scythe blade that sprung out of a skull-topped cane.

"Get out of her you  _ witch, _ " Maria Calavera snarled. 

Kai's red eyes began to glow with the power of the thing that was now looking out from them. "Clearly it was a mistake letting you scuttle off under a rock like the wounded insect you are,  _ Reaper _ ," Salem sneered, shoving the crackling, flickering Dust-infused blade down a little.

"Your little minions couldn't kill me, just what makes you think you can finish the job yourself?" Maria replied with a smirk.

Then she suddenly shoved with more power than that wizened body looked like it had, just enough to push the sword back and haul back her scythe, driving the crown of the skull capping it into Kai's belly and sending the redhead staggering backwards.

"Kai, what the hell is going o-!" Grey's demand cut off as her shin cracked across his head and drove him to the floor, the red-eyed woman completing the spin and diving back at Maria with a hard thrust of the sword.

The fragile-looking elderly Huntress was suddenly a blurring whirlwind of agile motion, knocking the thrust away with her short scythe-cane, planting her foot in the redhead's face and shoving off of it, the possessed woman stumbling back a half-step as Maria sprung backwards, twisted, rebounded off the wall and came in striking at her opponent's face with the top of the skull again. 

Salem blocked with the edge of Red Legacy's guard then dropped backward, planting on one hand and kicking upward, striking the old woman in the belly and sending her rocketing towards the fireplace, only for her to twist and plant the point of the scythe in the mantle, twisting herself upward and perching atop the flat plane of wood.

"You are at a severe disadvantage here, Reaper," Salem cooed with tones like poisoned honey, rising to Kai's full height and swiping the sword to the side, everyone else in the room left staring in shock, all of them on their feet with weapons in hand but clearly not knowing what to do. "I can try to kill you all I like, but you can't fight me effectively without killing the foreigner."

"Mm, and what makes you think I won't kill her? I mean, I'm a little attached to the Baoula girl, admittedly," Maria replied evenly as she yanked her weapon free of the wooden mantle and held it out at the ready. "But the rest of them are really just a pickup group."

"Hm-hm-hm-hm-hm," Salem chuckled humorlessly with Kai's throat, raising Red Legacy to point at Maria. "Your pretensions of cynicism are a pretty little lie drizzled over your hero complex, as ever. This girl and you really have a lot in common. But I think it's easy enough," she continued, tilting Red Legacy horizontal. "To bring out the real you."

'NO!' Kai howled as Salem whirled, Red Legacy's shimmering, crackling blade slicing right towards Blake's throat, Gambol Shroud coming up but too slow. Celica's transformed mode was the one to block the blow, Yang's purple eyes widening as the force of the blow knocked her arm wide, and the redhead's knee slammed up into the blonde's toned stomach hard enough to lift her off her feet, golden aura crackling as Kai screamed soundlessly in anguish. 

As Yang bent from the force of blow, coughing out a few drops of blood, Red Legacy swept down towards her neck. Maria's scythe blade caught Red Legacy's as she shot past, yanking it off-course and making its wielder whirl. But Salem stomped a foot to the floor with the sound of bones cracking to stop herself, and launched herself forward, snapping the sword down for a swipe. 'NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!' Kai screamed against the things holding her as it came up right towards Reese's face. 

The crackling Firestorm Dust infused blade barely avoided making contact with Reese's eye as Hell Ticket snapped upward, Grey letting out a yowl as the point cut across his cheek instead, a splash of blood sizzling in the rippling flames playing just over its surface. Salem swung Kai's foot up and slammed it into Grey's chest, sending him sprawling back into the chair and toppling over.

'Ruby! Weiss! Yang! Blake!' Kai howled into the emptiness inside her where she was being held captive, forced to watch as Salem hacked and slashed again and again, hurling herself from one to the other, with no desire to do anything but kill, no other mission or goal, forcing everyone else onto the defensive as they tried to balance protecting each other with the anguish in their own eyes at their friend's body attacking them. 'Reese! Grey! Maria! Dee! Someone  _ kill me _ ! Do it, do it, please, please, don't let her hurt you, just kill me!'

**_They'll never do it, child,_ ** Salem's mock-sympathetic tones boomed into her being.  **_They'd rather let themselves be whittled down a bit at a time defending themselves than do what's necessary._ ** She converted Red Legacy to shooting mode and fired at Dee's face, Maria flipping through the air and just barely deflecting the bullet with her scythe blade as Salem whirled and slashed with the downward-pointed blade at Weiss's leg, Ruby narrowly managing to knock the blow upward and away with rifle-mode Crescent Rose.  **_Or they'll whittle you away bit by bit as they try to stop you without killing you. They won't commit either way and make themselves do what has to be done, and that is why they'll always fail,_ ** she added, converting Kai's weapon back and taking a potshot swipe at Grey, only to be deflected by a desperately-thrown Lioncub.

"What the  _ hell _ is going on in here?!" a slightly damp Qrow demanded as he and an entirely dry Oscar appeared back in the doorway.

Salem's eyes locked on the farmboy, her absolute and utter rage spasming every muscle in her body. "Ozzzzzzmaaaaaaaaaa," she hissed, the glow blazing from Kai's eyes intensifying.

Oscar's eyes widened... and then there was a soft green flash, perceptible only to the magically-endowed consciousness currently channeling through Kai's body, Ozma gazed at Kai's body, Kai's eyes, somehow saw right past them, and for the first time in an eternity the two looked at each other 'face to face'.

"Beloved," Ozma whispered, the word coming instinctively, reflexively to his lips.

Salem screamed Kai's throat raw with a depth of hate that could only be born of the greatest love the world had ever known. A love that had driven her to first deceive and then directly challenge the gods themselves. A love that had carried her through walking a lonely, empty world on bare, raw feet that had nowhere to take her. A love that had endured through watching humanity rise again from nothing and knowing she had no place in it anymore. A love that had blossomed fresh and anew and bright as ever to see him somehow returned to her. A love that had urged her to secure their place as the new gods, so that they could never be taken from each other again. And finally, a love that had left her once more alone in the world, lifting the rubble off the bodies of their children and silently weeping for the last time, the remaining vestiges of any human kindness or heart flowing out of her with the tears and leaving only hate in their place.

And she flung her stolen body and blade at that man, Kai's friend and mentor, completely and utterly consumed with the desire to kill him again and again for the rest of eternity.

Kai's internal scream coincided with the clang of Clockwork Dirge striking the blade and knocking it away.  **_HIM?! HIM?!_ ** Salem raged at her, that world-devouring hate now directed at Kai Sterling, battering her very existence with the fire of it.  **_Having seen the faintest whisper, the most distant echo of what he did to me, you would still offer HIM the merest measure of love?! I will show you what he did to me! I will take EVERYTHING from you!! Starting with the thing you always wanted most!!_ ** Forcing Kai's body to the breaking point as she began battering at Clockwork Dirge as if trying to shatter it, she forced Qrow on the desperate defensive with no room for anyone else to come to his aid.

'No no no no no no DAAAAAAAAAAAAD!' Kai wailed, weeping with her entire being, and then suddenly finding herself lurching forward, tearing herself free of the nightmare's hold, desperately slamming herself right up against the implacable wall of Salem's will.

And gripping.

Red Legacy halted in the air just short of making contact with the zweihander's blade again, trembling in midair. 

"You... dare?" Salem snarled with Kai's lips, twitching and trembling, head twisting as if trying to find an angle that would let her press forward. 

"I dare... take my own body back... all day... you bitch," Kai replied in kind, one side of her mouth twitching and eye squinting, every bit of her body trembling as the two struggled for control.

"Fight her Kai c'mon," Reese whispered from nearby, wide-eyed.

"It has never been your... body," Salem grunted, shoving Kai's hands forward as if still hoping she could bring the edge of the blade to Qrow's neck. "It has always... been for the use of others! Since! The day! You woke up in that cell!"

"Fight her, Kai! Fight her!" Ruby called, pumping a fist in the air. "You can do it!"

"She's not the boss of you!" Yang roared.

"No one is! You're the leader!" Blake added.

"Kick her  _ ass _ , Kai!" Weiss shouted, stomping a foot on the floor.

The others continued to shout their support as the redhead shook, Salem still trying to force the blade forward, trying to force Kai to take Qrow's life, centuries upon centuries of hate focused on killing him, needing to kill him to inflict some bit of the pain she's gone through on her host.

"You can do it, kid," Qrow whispered softly, lowering Clockwork Dirge and gazing across Red Legacy's blade at her.

Kai gritted her teeth until they almost cracked, tasting blood in her mouth, feeling something push in around her eyes, darkness trying to take her, trying to push her away and take everything that had become hers from her.

"GET! AWAY! FROM MY!  **_DAD!!_ ** " she roared, grabbing not Red Legacy but the dark thing in there with her, yanking back on it.

And sending them both tumbling and dropping away.


	41. Chapter 29

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Kai offers Physical Satan a deal.

????, ????, ???? (Salem's mind)

Kai crashed through uncountable eras of the world like she was hurtling through panes of glass at hundreds of miles an hour. It was too much for a human mind to retain, far too much as she found herself living a life of thousands of centuries as if it were her own in the span of heartbeats.

She couldn't possibly have kept it all in her head. 

But she kept enough.

She saw.

She knew.

And then she found herself being pulled towards the part of all those memories, that impossibly long life, with the greatest gravity, that dominated every waking second of the immortal's existence since it had happened.

She slammed down hard on stone, felt her back snap and only grunted in agony, still overwhelmed, twitching and shuddering. Kai felt herself becoming whole even without Aura, seemingly more because she just... did... rolling herself over and pushing herself up on her hands.

Kai was in the courtyard of a castle, and it was in ruins. It was burned. It was shattered. It still smoked and here and there bits and pieces crumbled. She pushed herself up onto all fours, lifting up her knees, staring in front of her at a pair of tattered sheets draped over still forms that here and there leeched red into the linen.

Both were very small.

And then she heard the crack of a pebble clattering down steps, and turned.

Salem stood, straight-backed, tall, regal. Still every inch the goddess she had been impersonating for almost a century that point. Clad in her beautiful if scorched gown, her hair drifting loose around her face, pure white even as it fell in disheveled strands. In her arms she carried another small, still form clad in a sheet.

Her black-scleraed eyes locked on Kai.

Very slowly, and very gently, she bent to lay her burden upon the stone stair. Stroked the curve at the top as she rose back to her full, regal height.

And then she came at Kai like a tornado.

" **_YOU DARE?!_ ** " she howled, red eyes blazing, her other hand raised and fingers curled into claws, arm trembling. "You dare to violate  _ this _ place,  _ this _ memory?!"

"Not... my... choice," Kai gasped out, gripping Salem's wrist with both hands, sincere regret and fury warring inside her.

"No. No you  _ never _ had a choice, did you?" Salem snarled, staring right into Kai's eyes. "And you'll never have one again. Do you know what I'm going to do to you, little  _ slave _ ? I am going to chain you down. I am going to take my time breaking you. Taking everything you thought you were, everything you thought you could be, and I will grind it to dust. Then I will draw you back, build you up, and do it all over again."

Her fingers squeezed ever so slightly, feeling entirely real and entirely like they were made of steel cables against Kai's throat. "For a million years I will trample you down and remind you that you were born to be used up and tossed away, and when I am finally ready to throw you in the trash, in the second that has passed in reality I will reclaim your body and I will make everyone you love die as they watch your face smiling at them."

And Kai knew that Salem had seen everything of her too. Had taken in all of it enough to know her deepest fears, her starkest nightmares, everything that terrified her.

... And yet she wasn't  _ actually _ doing it.

'She needs me to agree. She needs me to give in,' Kai realized, closing her eyes, making herself focus. 'Because this isn't just her space, it's mine.' That was why she healed. That was why she wasn't dying even though Salem was crushing her windpipe. Because her existence was pressed into this space the same as the immortal's. So she dredged up the clearest memories she had from all that she'd just experienced of Salem, and she exercised her control on the mindscape.

Then she opened her eyes, calm as she looked back into Salem's. "Okay. Fine. ... But are you going to do it in front of them?"

"Momma?"

Salem's eyes went wide.

Her hand suddenly slackened, dropped Kai coughing into a pile on the ground as she turned, a hard breath sucked trembling into her lungs.

Where there had been three bloody forms draped with sheets, there were now four beautiful little silver-eyed girls staring at her in uncertainty and fear.

She whipped back around, staring at Kai with something that could only be called betrayal despite all the hate, her whole fearsome, immortal body trembling as the redhead hauled herself to her feet, bracing a hand against the stone pillar she'd been slammed against.

"You hurt me, I hurt you," Kai muttered hoarsely, breathing hard. "That's how you wanted to play this game, right?"

"You... you..." Salem's head shook as if loosened on her neck, formerly steel-strong hands shaking as she raised them, turned slightly back to the four children still staring at her, waiting, wondering if momma was going to hurt someone. "How?" she choked out.

"You know full well how. You know what I can do." Kai turned her head, spit blood, before glowering at Salem again. "Why I can lie so well. Why I could be whatever the johns wanted me to be. Because Kai is just someone I built on the blank spaces after the mind wipe. Because I intimately knew subtle influence and mind shifts from the day I gained consciousness. I can pull bits of me back and put something else in their place... you just pulled the whole thing back and put yourself there."

She pushed off the pillar, stood up straight. "But that's mine to control now. That's something  _ I _ choose to do, for  _ me _ ," she snapped. "And it's how I made them," she added, nodding to the four pale-haired girls with silver eyes. "From  _ your _ memories of them. From the day they were born to this one. They're as real as you remember them being. So the way I see it, we have three options."

Slowly, Salem gained some amount of control over herself, forcing her hands to stop shaking, instead bringing them up to press her fingertips together as she turned fully to look at Kai, pursing her lips. "Go on."

"Option one. You do your whole little parade of breaking and tormenting me. And the entire time, they react to that just like you  _ know _ the real thing would," Kai murmured, bobbing her head towards the girls, something like terror flashing across Salem's cold, cruel gaze. "Option two. You just let me go, and all of this disappears since we're not sharing headspace anymore. Or, option three, we make a deal. You let me go, you  _ never _ try to mess with my head ever again, and as a little bonus you use whatever killswitch I bet you've got for Grimm to get rid of every Apathy on that settlement."

Salem scoffed softly. "And what, fool child, do you think you could possibly offer me in return for these things?"

Kai slowly lifted a hand, her fingers spread. "Five more minutes with your children."

Salem... hesitated.

Her head slowly turned back towards the four tiny little apparitions behind her. Then back to Kai.

Her eyes narrowed.


	42. Chapter 30

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Kai learns that there are costs to making deals with the devil.

January 6, 244 AGW, 8:39 PM (Remnant 4482)

"GET! AWAY! FROM MY!  **_DAD_ ** !!"

The words were still ringing through the room when Kai snapped back into herself, Red Legacy falling from suddenly limp hands to clatter to the floor as she collapsed weeping against Qrow's chest.

"Oh kid," Qrow murmured, closing his eyes, a pair of tears slipping out to run down into the constant scruff of his near-beard even as he raised his hand to rest on the back of her head. "You don't want the burden of my name."

"The hell I don't," she sobbed, clenching her fingers against his shirt.

"Is... is it over?" Dee asked, his own voice shaking a bit.

Just then there was a terrible howl from beneath that almost literally rattled the floorboards, even the trained Huntresses and Huntsmen on NRO jumping at it... before the howl ended abruptly and faint wisps of black mist began issuing up from cracks in the floorboards, and out in the snowy night billowing from here and there in the ground.

"What... just happened?" Maria murmured, staring at a flicker of what was obviously dissipating Grimm.

"I made a deal with the devil," Kai murmured, lifting her head.

"What?" Yang blinked, a hand still resting on the darkening bruise on her stomach. "You... got Salem to get rid of the Apathy? What did that  _ cost _ ?"

Kai shrugged, trying to keep it nonchalant. "Five minutes."

* * *

"It cost me a whole hell of a lot more than five minutes.

"See, the thing is, I didn't just whip up Ozma and Salem's children and then toss them out there like carved toys.

"I was them.

"They were an extension of me. Think of them sort of like a... simulation I was running in my brain using Salem's memories of them. Sure, there in the mindscape, they looked like something separate.

"But inside each little silver-eyed girl, I was looking out.

"It cost me five minutes of that big-E Evil we were going off to fight hugging me, and crying, and telling me how much she loved me, and telling me how sorry she was, and all the things she'd wanted to teach me.

"It cost me so much more than five minutes."

* * *

"Fuck, though, everyone, I'm  _ so _ sorry," Kai groaned as she turned from Qrow to look at the rest, her face crumpling at the sight of blood streaming down Grey's face and dripping onto his shirt. "Oh Dragon forgive, Grey..."

"It's fine, it'll probably be barely noticeable when it heals," he declared, grinning and shrugging. "Besides, it'll go good with my... what'd Reese call it that one time?"

"Bad boy on a redemption arc hotness," the green haired woman immediately piped up.

"Y'know it'll scar even less if you actually put something on it and use the dermaspray in the medical kit instead of just standing there looking cool as it bleeds, pretty boy," Maria commented dryly, which sent Blake scurrying for the medical supplies while Grey looked abashed, ears folding down a bit at the tips.

"Ah, yeah, well..." He grinned, almost mischievously. "But it does look cool, right?"

Kai couldn't help but grin a little too, though it fell as she turned and looked at the blonde. "Yang, are you okay?"

"I'll be alright, but was that really Salem? How?" Yang winced a little as her fingers pressed against her bruised abs. "And how the hell was she so  _ strong _ ?! We've gone all-out in training before and I  _ know _ you can't hit that hard."

"Yeah, it was her. And she could hit that hard because it tore my calf muscles in multiple places and shattered my knee to do it," Kai said flatly, wincing at the lingering soreness despite her Semblance, Yang's eyes widening. "Salem's body near-instantly heals from any damage, so she's long since learned to not adhere to any limits. She doesn't care if she pulps muscle or breaks bones doing it, so she can hit someone as hard as she wants, and she treats and body she possesses the same, pushing it past its limits until it rips itself apart."

Grey, who had settled down on the floor to make it easier for Blake to tend his cut, snapped his fingers and pointed, lips pulling back from his teeth. "The Grimm on the  _ train _ !"

"Wait, what?" Yang looked over at Grey, then back at Kai, jaw sagging. "You mean the one Blake and I couldn't hold down? That's because  _ Salem _ was in it?"

"Preeetty sure, yeah," Kai huffed, eyeing Ozma... but finding only Oscar staring back at her in slight shock.

"Okay the connection to the Grimm I get I guess," Weiss said, frowning. "But how'd she get inside  _ Kai _ ?"

"I dunno, I... Maria was guiding us in some meditation and talked about letting our Auras open up to Remnant, and I did, then something just... grabbed me and hauled me down and Salem stepped into my place."

"... Hm. Well, that may be my fault then," Maria acknowledged with a slow bob of the head. "When I gave that advice, I had no idea there might be an Aura Linker in the group."

"A... wha?" Kai asked.

"An Aura Linker. Someone who has the ability to blend their Aura with those of others, strengthen the connections and bonds they have with other people. In my defense, it's an incredibly rare gift!" she added, huffing. "Almost as rare as silver eyes!"

"Huh, guess we're really a collection of rare and beautiful cuties, huh?" Reese snorted, no doubt recalling her earlier 'lottery winner' rant as she flopped down to sit on the hearth again.

"... Eh?" Maria looked over, cybereyes whirring in a blink. "Whanao ya be sayn gehl ye be havvinose bry shyneh peepah now?"

"Nomum thizyeeah guhll havinose swomgrin aye ah-yeah Rubby Roh havin'em sivvahaye yessum."

"You?" Maria warbled, turning to Ruby curiously.

"Uh..." Ruby glanced back and forth between the two, then looked upward and waved both fingertips in the air, mouthing silently as if trying to replay something, then looked back at Maria and nodded, pointing with both fingers. "Yes! ... I think."

"Well that would have been useful to know beforehand and could have saved us a lot of trouble," Maria grumbled.

"Look, talk about it all you want, for right now, I need to talk to you and you, kitchen, now," Qrow rasped, pointing at first Kai and then Oscar, before almost stalking into the other room. The redhead and the farmboy exchanged a glance, Oscar the first to follow, Kai lingering a little.

"Guys, really... I'm so sorry," she murmured.

"God, enough, I don't want to be hearing about it forever," Grey snorted as Blake dabbed a bit at the mock-skin now covering his cut with her fingertip, smoothing it out.

"It wasn't your fault, Kai, you couldn't have known, and you stopped her before Uncle Qrow got hurt," Yang assured her. Then she snorted. "If you wanna make it up to me by buying me something nice, though, I wouldn't mind."

Grey glanced at Yang, then looked at Kai, his ears perking up a bit. "Too late to extort presents? Tch!" he added as Blake gave him a little backhanded whap on the shoulder.

Shaking her head ruefully, Kai turned and made her way into the kitchen. She'd barely walked in after Oscar when Qrow whirled and slammed a hand against the kitchen table, red eyes boring into the farmboy. "Did he  _ know _ ?"

Oscar winced, having jumped a little at the slam. "I don't think so, he seemed completely caught by surprise."

" _ Did he _ -"

"Hey, hey, easy," Kai murmured, stepping in against Qrow's front and pressing a hand on his shoulder to urge him back a little. "You can't get answers out of Ozma by yelling at Oscar, okay?"

"... Hnh. Yeah. You're right," Qrow grunted, yanking a chair out from under the table and thunking it down to sit in it backwards. "I think the NRO's already starting to wear off from all the adrenaline and other crap. Not that we need it anymore, apparently."

"Yeaaaah I'd definitely say mine's gone," Kai scoffed, scratching the side of her neck. "I sure as shit do not feel normal."

"But you're sure, Oscar? Ozma didn't know about Salem's ability to possess things?" Qrow urged.

Oscar hesitated... then huffed. "He says he kind of  _ suspected _ that she might be in the one on the train, but he was never sure. It's nothing she ever showed him she could do when they were... together... so it was something she either kept from him or it was something she developed later on. ... Did you get anything from her being in there with you?"

"I got... a  _ lot _ ," Kai admitted, giving her own huff. "But I had trouble retaining it, there was just so much. I've got a pretty broad strokes understanding of the whole situation but other than that, no. Nothing about her abilities or plans, just-'

_ 'Mommy's so sorry, baby... _ '

"... I need to sit down," Kai rasped miserably, settling into a chair and leaning her head on her hand like it might fall off.

Qrow and Oscar both looked at her, then exchanged a glance before Qrow simply nodded at the farmboy, letting him loose. Before he could go, though, Kai reached out and snagged his sleeve.

"Oscar," she whispered, head still lowered. "I'm gonna tell everyone."

"... He says he was already planning to after tonight, you don't need to-"

"No. I'm not gonna tell everyone because he won't." She lifted her head, met those green-gold eyes with red ones. "I'm gonna tell everyone so he doesn't have to."

Oscar was silent for long moments, then looked confused. "He says... 'thank you'." Then he turned and headed back for the living room.

"So he doesn't have to?" Qrow asked with a frown.

"Like the dude said, some things you shouldn't have to say in a body that's too young to drink," she muttered, drawing Qrow's flask out of her pocket and unscrewing it. "And you can just stop giving me that look this is for my fucking headache, okay?"

He snorted. "Yeah, okay." He fell silent, just watching her take a pull of his favorite cheap whiskey. Finally, though, Qrow said, "'Get away from my dad', huh?"

"Um." Kai blushed a bit as she rescrewed the cap and tucked the flask away again. "... Yeah. Guess so."

"... How y'figure, kid?" he asked, his voice almost a plea.

"I mean..." She looked away, rubbing her arm lightly. "I'm not trying to force it on you or anything. But... we go out and have fun, you tell me stories, we laugh at the same dumb crap, and... and you teach me stuff, and you look out for me, you bought me boots just because you saw I needed them, and... when we fight together I feel really safe, I feel like you'd do anything to keep anything from happening to me," she admitted, swallowing.

"... Oh kid I absolutely would," he admitted in return, his rasp of a voice softer than before, red eyes shimmering a little. "I would all damn day and to the end of time. But that doesn't make a father."

"Then what does?" she asked, bringing her eyes back to meet his.

Qrow was silent for a long time after that, lowering his head a little and staring at his own forearms. Finally he took a deep breath and looked at her again. "It's not about whether I want you to be mine. I think we both know we don't share blood, but you said once you'd choose me... and after all's said and done, I'd choose you. But there's so much better out there. Ruby and Yang's dad, he's like... the definition of Dad, yanno? He'd probably love to have you, five minutes with him and he'd have convinced himself he changed your diapers when you were a baby. You don't want me, my curse, my... baggage," he added, eyes trailing towards the pocket where he watched her put his flask.  "... You think I'd be a good dad? Okay. First good dad move. I'm asking you... think, really _think_ about what you're saying. Do you want a father that you had to take his damn whiskey away from him to get him to stop drinking?"

Since he was in fact her dad, she listened and really thought about it.

A single teacher with a drinking problem heavily in denial about his actual life goals and who probably had intimacy issues and who also literally caused bad luck for everyone around him. That was pretty much the picture here.

On the other hand, the other parental figures she'd taken were a genemod soldier with rage issues who picked up new addictions for fun, and a pseudo-philosophical warrior nun who took pride in being a slave.

So really he was in good company and didn't actually measure up that bad, put in that context.

"I think," Kai said slowly. "At the end of the day... maybe it feels even more right because I... think you need me almost as much as I need you." She reached out to take one of those rough hands, holding it in both of hers and looking down at it as she continued. "I... want someone who will make a home for me. ... I think you need someone to make a home for."

Qrow stared at the redhead silently for long moments. Then he bobbed his head in a nod. "... Yeah. Okay. Hell with it. Hit me with that while I'm stone cold sober and what'm I gonna do?"

"Say 'I love you'?" she prompted, smiling a little wanly.

There was just a flicker of fear there... but then it was replaced by warmth. Qrow rose to his feet, wrapping his arms around Kai as she stood as well. "Okay. I love you, kid."

"Love you, Dad," she whispered back, resting her face against his chest.


	43. Chapter 31

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Kai tells the story of the greatest love affair to ever completely screw over an entire planet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In the course of the game, once I started Kai's RWBY path, I always planned to tell Salem and Ozma's story from five perspectives. Ozma's, Salem's, Kai's, The God of Light's, and the God of Darkness's. It is... a VERY taxing thing to do, and so far only two of the five have been done.
> 
> Kai's retelling is admittedly the most fun, for me, because her filter on things just made it a little hilarious. That's really the only reason a version of it wound up in here instead of a version of Ozma's, which was far more solemn and dramatic (and in which he was far harsher to himself and kinder to Salem).

January 6, 244 AGW, 9:15 PM (Remnant 4482)

The moment Kai stepped back into the living room, she was assaulted by a ballistic smol.

"COUSIIIIIIIIIIN!"

"Guh." Kai wriggled a bit on the floor, huffing softly at Ruby's cheek-to-cheek nuzzling. "Ruby. Plz. I just finished healing my everything. Could you not?"

"Better get used to it now that you're family," Yang scoffed, leaning down to grab Ruby by the hood and haul her up and off of the redhead, the silver-eyed Huntress squeaking and flailing her limbs a bit as she dangled briefly in midair.

"I  _ tried _ to stop them from eavesdropping but no one would listen," Weiss groused.

Translation from Weissese: She was eavesdropping the hardest.

"So, Oscar said the two of you had something to tell us," Grey said as Kai made her way in to stand by the fire, Oscar having taken over Reese's place on the hearth... no, it was Ozma, just slumped and heavy-headed.

"Yeah." She hesitated, then glanced over. "Dee, you probably wanna, like... go take a patrol of the house or something. This is kinda fucked-up stuff that you don't wanna hear if you don't want it altering the course of your life."

Dee opened his mouth as if to protest... then closed it. Seemed to think about that for a second. Then nodded rather quickly and scrambled up to walk out of the room.

"Maria, you-"

"Oh, no thank you, I think I'm going to sit  _ right here _ and hear about this," the old woman scoffed, the chair having been righted so she could return to it. "I've always suspected that  _ thing _ was out there somewhere, even if I didn't have a name for her, now I want to know what's going on and who this creature is that had my eyes taken from me. Besides," she added, smirking. "I was the Grimm Reaper. You don't get rid of me by sending me on a walk."

Qrow made a choking noise and had to lean on the wall.

Kai nodded slowly, folding her arms over her chest before she began. "When I had Salem in my head, when I yanked her out and then made a deal, I got to see the whole story of what happened between her and Ozma. I think it's important to understand what's going on... what we're dealing with. And a little of why. It's... rough. On a lot of levels. Ozma's right... there's stuff he shouldn't have to relive through personally telling it. So I will. When it gets to the part of his story that Salem wasn't there for, I'll let him pick it up."

She considered how to start, glancing upward, then shrugged a bit. "Once upon a time, there were these two big glowy energy alien assholes that decided they were gods. They figured they'd head to some planet and fuck around making humans and playing overlord to them. One of the aliens was an arrogant, egotistical bastard who wanted everyone to think he was the greatest thing since blood absorbing oxygen. The other alien was an arrogant, egotistical bastard who was a total edgelord but at least he knew he was a dick. So they settle down and they make a bunch of shit, humans, some animals, and oh yeah because they're such extra special dicks, they make a bunch of creatures literally formed of hate and malice called Grimm. There's your benevolent starborn overlords for you."

She rolled her eyes, adding in a mutter, "Assholes, giving dragons flying through space a bad name." At the odd looks that got her, she cleared her throat and continued. "So, anyway, these aliens make humans and they play like they're the divine overlords of all creation. And humanity do what humanity do and it makes a bunch of nations and kingdoms and fiefdoms and nation-states and roving barbarian tribes and orgy houses and it gets about its shit, basically on its own but of course the glowy cocksuckers are taking credit for everything."

"Rein in the language a tad, kid, you keep shocking everybody but Reese," Qrow snorted.

"Speak for yourself, pantywaist," Maria announced, making Qrow choke again.

Having to bite back her own snort of laughter, Kai continued. "Alright, so anyway, along comes this as-... this king, and he has a particularly hot daughter. And he maybe has like some guilt or something over how hot he thinks she is so he builds a little death-maze challenge tower and sticks her in it by herself and doesn't ever let her out. Well, this pisses off some do-gooder wannabe superhero who's been wandering around toppling tyrants and slaying dragons, as y'do, so he's all hi-ho screw your castle here's my magic pyeoooom. He rescues the babe and is all 'You're free now' and she's all 'Free to smooch you big boy' and he's all 'yaaaay' 'cause even though he didn't go in there hoping for that by now he's definitely into her. And so they go skipping off into the sunset, zapping bad guys to pieces all along the way, and they live happily ever after."

She raised a hand to rub at her face tiredly. "Not."

Sighing, she dropped the hand. "So the guy gets sick. Real sick. It's not one of those inspiring, he's-so-brave sort of sicks, it's one of those he lays there in bed and he just slowly dies sorts of sick. And his wife, she has to watch him go through that. She can't do anything. She can't stop it. All she can do is cry. Sit by his bed and cry. Sit alone and cry. Walk the world and cry." 

She hesitated a moment, wincing just a little at the sound of Ozma crying softly, before pushing on. "So she's like 'You know what, screw this noise, I don't accept this, this world's full of magic and wonder and gods I'm not taking this bullshit we earned our happy ending'. So she goes marching off to the glowy gold alien she thinks is a god, and she's all polite at first, and he's all 'my child my child my child' like he's this loving father figure creator and tells her no he won't do it because the order and the balance and nevermind that he'd already kicked that crap to the curb by playing god. So she gets ticked and tells him no, this isn't fair, that's crap, and the moment she's not the properly humble and respectful little flea kissing his ass he flits his fingers and sends her away."

Kai scowled for a moment, wondering how much pain could have been averted if one glowy so-called god had humbled himself to sit down and just talk to one of his 'children' who was in agony. 

"... So anyway. She's definitely not taking this crap from Goldy. She wants her guy back, she's going to get him. So this audacious bitch just up and marches into Hell. Lovely place, located conveniently right on the planet surface, full of black pools of ooze and Grimm and random dead people. She plays the 'one said no but maybe the other will let me if I don't tell them I asked someone else first' game. Literally. She's literally the first person ever to have the huge enormous balls to walk into this place so Purple Nurple is kind of fascinated by her, and she kisses his ass a bit and asks him to bring her guy back without ever mentioning she asked Goldy first. And he's all 'sure, no troubles bubbles' and does it, balance what balance."

She rolled her eyes. "Then Goldy shows up and the two twits start having an argument. And during this argument, the woman's husband gets killed. Then resurrected again. Then killed again. In her fuckin' arms," Kai almost snarled, unable to help feeling an echo of Salem's pain and rage, because dammit if that wasn't something worth being pissed about. She paused, glancing over at Qrow. "That one okay?"

"I'd say that about warrants it, yup," he answered grimly.

"Anyway, when it's all over, Goldy proves that his whole talk about a delicate balance and a perfect cycle of life and death was all just lies by making the woman immortal. So she can never be with her guy again, ever, even when she dies. 'Cause she can't. And he's like 'Oh it's okay it'll wear off when you bow down and acknowledge I was right all along and you are a little teeny tiny bug who will live and die when I say so and I am GOD' because that's just soooo benevolent. Sooooo she spends a few decades trying to kill herself, as you might imagine, before she settles back into 'I'm not taking this crap' mode and heads around the world building an army by lying her ass off and saying she likes being immortal, she wanted to be immortal, and they can all be immortal if they just kill the gods. Of course, since as said these alien poseurs are capable of creating life and moving matter and energy around on a whim, this goes about like you'd expect. Purple Nurple gets mildly offended and decides that a suitable salve for his bit of irritation is..." 

She took in a long breath, let it out in a rush. "Complete and total planetary-scale genocide."

"... what," someone said, very softly. 

"Yeah. He instantly wiped out everybody. Except Salem," Kai added with a shrug, dropping the last of the vestiges of her attempt to storybookify the tale. "Nah, Salem they left alone and immortal just to torture her. Just to make her suffer for her audacity. She endured the rain of meteors that followed the moon getting smashed... oh by the way, thank Purple Nurple for that, he apparently couldn't be assed to fly around... she endured the empty, ruined planet, the Grimm. Finally she couldn't take it anymore and she made her way back to the one alien's place, the place where the Grimm spawned. She looked down into the pool, this big bubbling mass of anti-life, and she was so desperate for it to end she threw herself into it. She thought it might destroy her soul, that she might never get to be together with Ozma again, but she just couldn't take the loneliness and pain anymore."

"But it didn't kill her," Ruby said softly. "It made her... the way that image Emerald showed us looked."

"Yeah. It hurt her. It tortured her. It..." Kai hesitated, looked at the hunched form of Ozma, his eyes staring through the floor to the other side of the planet. But it was only fair that everyone know the full story. Know who they were facing. All of her. And how she came to be. "It violated her. It violated her body, her spirit, and her mind. And she clawed her way out changed into the... gestating form of that thing she is now." 

Kai sighed again. "It's hard to tell, because it's her memories I'm working on, but I think it mostly... it tinted her, you know? She'd already kind of gone off the deep end at that point, but now all she could see was the worst in everything. It wasn't like she was... driven to do evil, she didn't turn into a baby-eating sadistic monster. ... Not right then, anyway," she added, wincing a little. "She just couldn't look at the world without seeing only the darkness. Only the worst parts. Only the hate. It's like... she had endless life, but the light died in her. ... Or something.

"... Anyway. So, over time, she actually watches humanity and the Faunus develop and boy if you don't think she felt that was wild. But she wasn't like them anymore. She wasn't one of them. And Ozma wasn't there. She didn't care. She looked at how they all treated each other and she despised them, so she withdrew. She found a little house in the middle of nowhere, scared the hell out of the little old lady living there to chase her off, and settled in to live the rest of eternity alone." She glanced aside at the immortal sitting on the hearth. "'Til, whaddya know, one day Ozma shows up on her doorstep again. Just wearing some other poor bastard's body."

"I did not know," Ozma whispered, voice haunted. "When he offered me a way back where I would not be alone, I did not know what he meant."

"Yeah, that tracks," Kai snorted. "See, Salem wouldn't find this out until later, but Ozma'd been manipulated by Goldy. Goldy could have gone after anyone in history who could have gotten the job done, but he chose Ozma, Salem's only love, and boy if you don't think he was doing that just to be a dick I don't know if you've been paying attention to this story so far. Goldy has decided to resume his role as benevolent father-god but without pretending to actually do anything, and without Purple Nurple's interference. He makes four artifacts and sends them to Remnant, tells Ozma that if they're assembled, the Brothers Dick will return and judge humanity, but if they're not up to snuff, boop, dead again. So kind," she muttered flatly. 

"So anyway, Salem and Ozma, together again, and what ensues next is probably the grandest case of lovers lying to each other that was not tied to an attempt to get laid in the history of the world. They both just leave out most of the crap they did and why they're there now, they settle down, they look around and they go 'Boy humanity sure is being dicks to each other and especially these Faunus dudes'. And to Salem it's the most natural thing in the world that the way to fix everything is to run everything, because she and Ozma still have magic and the rest didn't."

"She was always very charismatic," Ozma said softly. "And I was a fool."

Kai couldn't help but scoff and roll her eyes. "Okay yeah true but let's be honest Oz she also regularly tried to suck your brains out through your dick and slamfucked you so hard you had to heal your hips up afterwards. Aaaaanyhoo," she continued quickly, ignoring the numerous red faces around the room, and the strangled noises Ozma was making. "So Ozma here goes along with it. Salem convinces him it's the best way, they set themselves up as the new gods, and like all gods that actually mess about with the world they incite holy wars. Gotta teach everyone their peaceful ways by force after all. But amidst this they also have the consequences of all that canoodling and they have four gorgeous little girls. Little girls who can do magic. 

"And Salem... she finally goes off the deep end when she finds this out. The quietest, most softest splash into the deep end of the crazy pool you ever saw. Because all of a sudden, that hate-tinted worldview that's been trying to resolve how much she loves Ozma and her babies sees the solution." Kai's lips pressed into a line. "Get rid of all the old humans. Get rid of all the Faunus. Replace them with her and Ozma's descendants. The old people that rejected her, had no place for her, they'll be gone, and in her place she'll have an entire planet full..." 

Kai grimaced. "Of family."

"... So," she continued after giving everyone some time to absorb that. "Oz here naturally gets cold feet at this point. Probably understandably, his first instinct is to get his babies away from this crazy psycho bitch that's now talking about creating an entire planetary population of inbred mages. But, Salem already knew Ozma had cold feet, he'd admitted as much earlier, and she catches him in the act. She attacks him and..." 

She grimaced again, though this time it took her a few moments before she could speak without her voice shaking. "... I'm not gonna lay blame. I'm not gonna say it was anyone's fault. Just... there was collateral damage."

Kai went silent for a while on that, even the distant, already dissipating echo of Salem's pain, that monster's last human sobs carrying through the shattered halls of what had once been her family's home, ringing through her mind.

' _ Mommy is so sorry _ .'

"Even then... as twisted and cruel and dark as she had started to become," Ozma whispered, voice shaking. "I cannot imagine what it must have been like for her. Digging through the rubble... with her magic, or... her hands. ... Searching for those four little bodies."

"Three."

Ozma blinked and raised his head, looking as stunned as if she'd slapped him. "I... I'm sorry?"

"Salem found three bodies. And a lot of blood. They were... in bad shape," Kai admitted, fighting not to close her eyes so that she wouldn't see those little crumpled forms covered with sheets. "Salem figures the other was hit by a magic blast or something. But. She only ever found three bodies."

"I... ... I see."

"Anyway. Sorry Oz. I think at this point it's your show. Guess me telling it probably didn't help that much after all."

"No, Miss Sterling, thank you. Your... unique perspective and insights into Salem's feelings on things were actually quite helpful all the same, and... as painful as hearing about some things is, it is still better than having to speak them myself."  He took a breath, nodded, and looked out at everyone. "So, after Salem killed me... for the first time... I spent a great number of lives in my forced reincarnations going through... much of what she must have when first walking an empty world. But my world was not empty, and eventually I found my way back, and began attempting to help it instead. I saw the constant Grimm attacks, saw she was orchestrating many of them, and I resolved myself to finally complete the mission the God of..." 

He hesitated, snorted, and corrected himself, "'Goldy' had given me, for I did not yet have the context to know what he had actually done. I set off to find the Relic of Knowledge," he continued, gesturing to the lamp at Ruby's waist. "And I asked it three questions. The question, and the answer that caused my despair, should be obvious. I asked it how I could defeat Salem, and Jinn, the entity within, told me 'You can't'. After that..." 

He sighed. "... After that, I admit, I lost faith. I believed all I could do was... prolong the inevitable, make people as strong and capable of resisting her as I could, unify them as  _ much _ as I could but if Salem could not be defeated I did not see how true peace and unity could ever be achieved."

Kai blinked slowly. "... Say that again."

"Ah... which part, Miss Sterling?"

"Your question to the lamp and what she told you. Say the exact words."

"Ah, well." Ozma frowned a little, glancing around. "I asked 'How do I defeat Salem?' and she answered 'You can't'."

Kai stared at him for a long moment, then let out a sigh, putting a hand to her face. "You idiot."

"Er?" He jolted back a bit as if he'd been lightly struck. "I-I'm sorry?"

"Dooooon't you actually  _ READ _ fairy tales?!" Blake suddenly cried, leaping from where she'd been sitting and starting to thwap Ozma about the head and shoulders with the book she'd been holding as if it were a teddy bear. "You don't! Ask! Something named!  _ Jinn _ ! A question! Like that! They'll! Answer!  _ Literally _ !"

"Hey hey whoa whoa Blake easy easy easy," Kai called, putting her hands on the other woman's shoulders and urging her back as Ozma stared at her in shocked confusion.

"C'mon now, easy does it," Grey murmured as he slid an arm behind Blake from behind and tugged her away as well, reaching up to scratch behind one of her ears.

Blake jumped slightly. "Hey! How dare... how... huh... mmf..." She slumped a little, a low, soft, steady thrumming building in her chest and reverberating in her throat as her eyes drooped.

The rest of Team RWBY's jaws dropped, and Reese made a noise of utter overstimulation. "Hey, no fair, I wanna," Yang whined softly as she reached a hand out towards Blake, lips poking out in a pout.

"... GAH!" Blake jumped away from Kai and Grey, batting at both with her hands, then letting out a heavy huff. She spent a moment smoothing out her jacket and adjusting her hair, before shaking the book at Ozma again, making him wince back a little reflexively. "You asked a very specific question and she gave you a very specific answer. Your wording means you asked her,  _ specifically _ , how you personally could defeat Salem. That means Jinn informed you that  _ you personally _ couldn't."

"Wait." Ozma blinked again. "What?"

"You didn't ask 'how can Salem be defeated', you asked 'how can I defeat Salem'," Kai noted with a sigh, rubbing her face with both hands. "You yourself, a guy who was never as good with magic as her, doesn't have an insta-healing body or the ability to control Grimm, and may for all we know have at the time been in the body of like a shoemaker or something."

"... He owned a men's boutique," Ozma said, his voice having gone faint.

"For the love of Dust Oz," Qrow groaned, leaning his head back and thumping it against the wall.

"I... I..." Ozma finally sighed and shook his head. "... I made a very foolish mistake. One of many, as we have seen tonight. At least someone actually pointed this out to me."

"I mean, we already knew at least some of this," Yang allowed, shrugging a little. "About who you really are, that you were connected to Salem, that you thought she was invincible. Imagine how rattled we'd all be if it just got dropped on us out of nowhere. Or in the  _ middle _ of nowhere or something."

"We'd already resolved to push forward knowing she was supposedly undefeatable," Kai agreed with a nod at Yang. "Now it looks likely that she isn't."

"So do we ask it again?" Maria suggested, pointing at the lamp with her cane. "Or what?"

"It's probably best if we wait," Kai responded before Ozma could reply, though she noticed he looked grateful. "Maybe if we get as many pieces in play as possible, make as much progress as we can, Jinn will give us a better answer when we ask."

"Riiiight, like, 'who do you think is gonna win' maybe has a really different answer at the start of a checkers match and when one player only has one piece left," Ruby piped up, nodding eagerly.

"Yeah, exactly." Kai took a deep breath, let it out. "Holy crap has it been a long day."

"Why don't you get some rest, kid?" Qrow suggested gently.

"... Nah, right now I'm like... overstimulated or something," Kai muttered. "I think I'm gonna go rummage around and see if there's any caff in the kitchen. Also someone go find Dee, make sure he didn't die," she added as she wandered back out of the room.

Apparently understanding her request for privacy, the others hung back as she made her way back to the kitchen, starting to rummage in cabinets looking for anything like a coffee bag or tin. She finally found a plastic tub of it and, though it smelled not particularly pleasant, it didn't smell rotten, so was still going to be a better cup of coffee than some she'd had. She loaded up the coffee maker, trying to focus on the simple tasks of adding scoops, adding water, adding-

' _ Mommy had so much she wanted to teach you... _ '

"Stop," she whispered to herself, closing her eyes tightly, thumping the side of her knuckles against her forehead gently a few times. "Stop. Stop."

"Kai?"

Kai jerked a little, quickly swiping the side of her hand under her eyes before turning. "Hey, Weiss, s'up? Coffee'll be ready in a little bit. It's old but the water seems pretty decent, so..."

Weiss's expression was one of deep concern, though, as she walked over. "Kai, all those things you said, so that Ozma wouldn't have to... about... what happened to his and Salem's children..."

"Yeah," Kai said with a quick nod, fighting to keep her voice even. "It was pretty rough."

Ice blue eyes looked into hers, searching. "... The way your eyes looked as you said it, though," she whispered. "It was almost like you'd lived it too."

The redhead turned her head away.

"Oh god Kai," Weiss whispered. "You... had to..."

"... That wasn't the roughest part, and I don't want to talk about it," the taller woman murmured.

Weiss said nothing for a moment, then nodded. "Okay. But..." She reached out, as if to lay a hand over one of Kai's... then instead stepped in to hug her tightly. "If you ever do need to talk about it, or anything else... I'm here. We're all here. Alright?"

Kai's face crumpled, the tears starting to escape in earnest now as she wrapped her arms around the other woman. "Please god just hold me for a little while," she pleaded, starting to shake.

' _ Mommy loves you. _ '

' _ Mommy never wanted to hurt you. _ '

' _ Mommy is so sorry. _ '


	44. Interlude 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which nothing has changed and everything has changed.

"Everything had changed and nothing had changed.

"Qrow and I had finally spoken the unspoken thing between us. We were father and daughter now. I was still too attached to 'Sterling' to become Kai Branwen just yet, but it didn't matter.

"But I think we'd both accepted that in our hearts already. It was just shifting the unspoken to a matter of course, and letting Ruby and Yang in on the deal, which I think they'd already had a pretty good idea of anyway too. Ruby glomped me way too much to have not already started thinking of me as legit family.

"So yeah. Our relationship changed and stayed almost exactly the same.

"... As for Salem...

"Yeah, trust me, I never for one second had any illusions that those five minutes with the recreations of her daughters was going to change her. I don't think it could have even if she'd wanted it to. I could have kept up that illusion for who knows how long in that dreamscape, years, decades, centuries, and the moment we got out Salem would have gone right back to her plans to slaughter everything.

"She was big-E Evil still. It was her nature now. Might as well try to teach a goldfish to breathe motor oil. Even without that, she'd simply spent far too long in pain, in that way of thought, to come back. The five minutes had been five minutes, and they'd been for her own sake and no one else's.

"So it didn't change what we had to do. If anything, after seeing even glimpses of the destruction and death she'd wrought, I was more determined than ever that we had to stop her. Whether we could kill her or not, she had to be defeated. Nothing had changed there.

"It was just that when we did defeat her... in whatever way it took... when we looked around and said 'Salem's done, we won, Remnant is saved'...

"... I was still going to remember what it felt like to have her arms wrapped around me and her hand stroking my hair, telling me she loved me.

"And that she was sorry."


	45. Chapter 32

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The stranded Huntresses and Huntsmen finally make it to Argus, heavy a little old blind woman. Ren gives someone a very important gift. Changes are discussed, homework is done. Blake and Yang finally decide they've had enough stalling and give in to each other.
> 
> In which I finally start writing something like actual chapter summaries.

"Our little side trip to Brunswick Farms wasn't exactly fun for anyone, but I think it was hardest on Oscar, Ozma, and me.

"Oscar, well, he had to yet again confront what seemed like the inevitability of merging with Ozma... losing his unique identity as they blended together. Except now he knew it wasn't really Ozma's fault. That there was no one to blame but a manipulative entity with the power to rearrange matter on a whim. Anger can feel pretty impotent in the face of that.

"I tried to be there for him. I know I teased him but I really honestly cared about him. Including outside of flustered farmboy noises. He was a great kid shouldering up under shit that he should never have had to, and despite the struggles handling it with a lot better grace than some other examples I could look at in the mirror.

"But as said I was a bit of a mess at the time too. But Ruby was really a rock for him... everyone else too, really. All the girls, at least, Qrow and Grey weren't always best at the emotional comforting stuff.

"God we probably gave that poor kid more crushes than the soda aisle.

"Ozma... well. How good can you be after having virtually everyone you know learn that you were at least part of the reason your own children died? On the other hand, when he came out now he seemed more relaxed, a little more at peace. I guess us knowing everything was a relief. He came out less, though, let Oscar have his time in the sun.

"The next day the weather broke and it warmed up. Like the Apathy had been dragging the cold front or something. Probably not, but still. We made some modifications to Yang's bike and a trailer we found and were able to set off without too much trouble. As we were leaving I couldn't help but lament to the others that we were leaving all those people behind unburied... especially Kayaa. Qrow told me, 'Sometimes we have to put the big right things before the little right things... but as long as we go back and do the little right things when we can, we still know we're on the right track.'

"He was really good at Dad-ing. Even if he didn't believe it.

"Along the way Maria gave Ruby a few tips on using her silver eyes... mostly she was just able to use it to kind of flashbomb Beowolves after a few days, and not very reliably and it tired her out, but she was learning.

"We got to Argus whole and hale and maybe even starting to heal a little. A good round of hugs at the garage where we'd decided to meet up so Yang could store Bumblebee did wonders for that."

* * *

January 10, 244 AGW, 3:22 PM (Remnant 4482)

"Kai!"

"Mmmm, my Rainbow," Kai practically purred, fully lifting Ilia off her feet and giving her a squeeze.

"Mmmf." Ilia's specks went pink, then shifted to a little blue. "Kai? Are you okay?"

"Yeah. Just missed you." Kai's grin faltered just slightly. "And we had a kind of rough time. But we're okay now."

She set Ilia down, watching Jaune embrace Ruby. 'Hm. Just hypothetically, those two would make  _ phenomenally _ pretty babies,' she mused to herself. She could see the faintest hint of it in their eyes when they looked at each other right now, something even they probably hadn't noticed. Not there yet. Just a potential.

It'd be cute as hell though.

"Man, I was worried I was never gonna see you again," Dudley admitted as he hugged his cousin (Kai had gotten curious on their journey up).

"Same here." Dee stepped back and clapped him on the shoulder. "Man, we've got a lot we need to talk about though."

"Huh? Uh, okay."

As more of the group that had been at the farm approached to say goodbye, Dee turned and drew the pistols from his waistband, proffering them back to Kai. "Here. Thanks for the loan."

"Don't mention it," she assured him, accepting them back. "Appreciate the help along the way, Dee."

"I didn't wind up doing so much," he said with a shrug.

It was Oscar who snorted. "Dee, you defended me from a Grimm with nothing but a bit of rebar."

"My dude, deeds matter a fair bit but you've got the heart all day," Kai chimed back in, grinning, as she slipped the pistols back into their holster.

"... You're right." He said with a nod. "Listen, I know you guys all thought I was a joke when you met me-"

"Aw c'mon man," Qrow grunted, glancing away.

"No, it's okay. I was. We were."

"H-hey!" Dudley spluttered.

"Somewhere along the way Dudley and I forgot that we became Huntsmen to help people, and we settled for doing a job and just telling ourselves we were helping people," Dee continued, Dudley at first looking shocked and offended... then finding himself looking at the ground. "But that's not gonna be me... us... anymore. So yeah, I've got something else in mind.

"I know it bothered you leaving all the people at that place behind, so... I'm gonna go call Dudley and me's teammates from back at school. Then we're heading back to that farm so we can gather everyone up... bring 'em back to Argus so people can claim 'em or they can at least get a decent burial. That seems like the sorta thing a Huntsman oughtta do."

"... Yeah, kinda does." Kai grinned wide, slapping him on the shoulder. "I appreciate it, big man."

"Oh, um, what about the mercenary, though? Is there anything we ought to do for her?"

Kai glanced down briefly, smile turning a little sad. "Bury her somewhere the stars can shine on her. That's about it."

"Okay." Dee nodded once. "I'll get it done."

"Know what? I know you will, big man," she said, clapping him on the arm again.

"Guess the first thing I've gotta do is hit a weapons store, though," he said with a sigh as he started to turn.

"... Hey, wait."

Dee turned back, blinking... then stared a little as Kai drew the bladed rifle from within her coat, unclipping the strap she'd been holding it there with and proffering it with both hands.

"I know you said you didn't want to take someone else's weapon, but this one needs a new owner. It's probably not exactly your style, but..."

"Maybe I'm ready to change my style anyway," Dee replied softly, smiling as he took it. "Does it have a name?"

Kai regarded the weapon for a long moment, then nodded. "Kayaa's Watch."

"I'll take good care of it," he assured her, clipping the strap back on and settling Kayaa's Watch over his shoulder. "Oh. Uh, and hey, Qrow?"

"Yeah man?" Qrow prompted.

Dee's cheeks went a little pink before he blurted, "Maybe, like, call me sometime or something, okay?" Then he turned and hurried off, a slack-jawed Dudley in his wake.

"Huh? Uh, I, well, I mean, m-maybe, or, wha?" Qrow stammered in the aftermath, after Dee had already departed... then flushed a bit himself as some snickering started in the group. "Oh, shut up."

"Unca Qrow's got a boyfriend, Unca Qrow's got a boyfriend," Ruby singsonged quietly, silver eyes dancing.

"I said shaddup you!"

* * *

"Dee's actions may not have been big and important, but he did something really important for me.

"He helped show me people can change. He illustrated right there in front of me that if you realized you didn't like the way your life was going, you could do something about it.

"Dee was ready to stop being a joke, and start trying to be a paragon of virtue and glory. Actions mattered... but sometimes intent mattered too.

"If you're out there, big man, I hope you found what you were looking for. Even if Qrow never did call you, heh."

* * *

"So we figure, tomorrow morning, Grey will take Yang and Ren to the Guildhall, and then the day after that we'll visit the Argus base, see if we can work something out."

"They haven't been too cooperative so far," Jaune said with a sigh. "They did eventually send someone out for the train, but I don't think it was a priority, especially since you guys got here first."

"We'll see what we can do," Grey said with a bit of a smirk. "But me and those two will probably pop back after spending about the same number of hours on the Guildhall, it's less expensive that way. I've got a friend who'll do the psycomms for cost, basically, but it's still gonna take a chunk out of my account, so."

"Thanks for agreeing, Grey," Kai added in, then glanced over the side of the hovertrolley they were on. "So Jaune, we heading for your sister's?"

"Oh, well, they did invite us over for dinner tonight, but we're actually going somewhere else for right now."

They got off the trolley in a pleasant little residential neighborhood. Argus housing seemed to run to relatively thin and tall, all of the houses run right together and sharing walls. Kai guessed that was one way to use the space most efficiently when you built a walled city, though the lack of alleyways bothered the street punk in her.

The style of the houses changed a bit as they walked along, starting to show more of them in slightly more vibrant colors, here and there with delicate little painted designs running up the door frames and along the window edging. Team JNPR, having been leading the group, came to a stop in front of one made out of faintly pink-tinted brick, its little flower paintings faded and chipped here and there.

"So whose house is this?" Yang asked curiously.

"It is mine," Ren answered evenly, causing various blinks. "It belonged to one of my slightly distant relatives who had gone to Kuroyuri with everyone. As the only surviving member of the Ren family, it was held in trust and then released to me on my eighteenth birthday. That said, allow me to amend my earlier statement."

He walked forward to one member of the group in particular, lifting their hand and placing a set of keys in it, curling their fingers around them. "It is Blake's."

"I... I don't understand," Blake murmured, looking down at the keys in her hand.

"I wish you to turn this house into a place, an office or an embassy, from which you and your parents may continue the work of seeking peace and equality between Humans and Faunus," Ren said, giving her hand a squeeze with both of his before stepping back. He looked over at the house, shook his head a little. "I... do not want this. It is a house, but it is not my home. My home is waiting across Anima for me to reclaim it... and it is here, with all of you. I instead wish for it to do some good, to serve as a starting point for making the world better."

"I don't know what to say," Blake whispered, her eyes shimmering and voice trembling a little. She smiled over at Ren. "Thank you."

"Please, do not mention it," he assured her warmly.

Blake sniffled a little as she headed up the stairs to unlock the door.

"Good on ya, kid," Qrow assured Ren quietly, clapping the younger man on the shoulder.

"We've got most of the upstairs rooms set up as bedrooms right now, as well as we were able," Jaune said as they all walked in. "So we don't all have to crash my sister's."

"Oh look at all the stairs, how lovely, I do so love Argus and its stairs," Maria scoffed as Reese lightly helped her up the front steps. 

"There is a cot we can fix up in the study downstairs, if you would like," Ren replied to her gently.

"That would be nice, young man, thank you." Maria snorted. "Since you're all being so considerate let me give you some advice. Don't expect Cordovin to be reasonable. In fact expect her to be very  _ un _ reasonable. It's probably best if I don't go with you to see her, iiiiit probably wouldn't help things much."

"Bit of a story there, huh?" Kai asked, glancing over.

"Let's just say that if she'd heard I and some 'Cognitive Hazard Grimm' were in the same location she'd be on the horn getting a missile strike authorized so fast it'd make your head spin," Maria snorted.

The redhead quirked an eyebrow. Oh yeah, there was a story.

"We'll manage something. For now let's start using up the hot water and catching some naps before dinner," she suggested after a moment. "A lot of us have been on the road for awhile, and getting a little of the dust off will help."

Dinner with Jaune's sister had been pleasant, just a bunch of sandwiches and some soup out of a box though it had been. (It was a lot of people to host, after all.) Some more of that word, and which Kai had, if she'd realized it, desperately needed at the moment.

She'd been pretty amused to see Yang and Weiss being the ones to go to pieces over Jaune's nephew the most... not exactly the pair she most expected to have their ovaries explode, but hey there y'go.

Honestly she'd thought the kid was super cute too, and even got to hold him for a bit. Maybe her ovaries had exploded just a teeny tiny bit as well.

But, well. Obviously that wasn't in her cards. Best to forget about it.

Instead she and Grey were now sitting in the living room of Blake's new house, scrolls displaying holoscreens in front of them that they were typing and skimming through rapidly.

"And what exactly are you two up to in here?" Maria asked as she shuffled in, cybereyes tilting slightly as she examined what looked a lot like the local Argus mirror of the Atlas official government library site.

"Merc homework," Kai replied absently as she flitted a page aside and opened a new one.

Grey picked up his Guild comm from the table, flipped to his contacts, tapped one and put it to his ear. "Hey, Jack? You got a couple of minutes to look at a local piece of precedent ruling? I want you to see if my interpretation is correct. Uh-huh. Remnant. 4482. Thanks man."

"They did this when we were in Haven, too," Ruby commented as she wandered up, munching a cookie out of a box. "Sat down and spent like five hours poring over their scrolls."

"You get in the habit after awhile," Kai murmured, then grunted. "Dammit, I'm gonna hafta go to the library before they close. Here," she added, flipping her current screen over onto Grey's display before picking up her scroll.

"What're you doing, learning the rules so you can break 'em?" Maria said with a snort.

"That'd be the logical conclusion, wouldn't it?" Kai replied with a grin as she shrugged on her coat.

Blake sat in the simple chair that their improvised bedroom had been provided with, reading a book that Jaune's sister-in-law had been kind enough to loan her. The house Ren had so generously and kindly gifted her had a fair number of rooms, enough that each pair of partners had been given their own room, with Qrow and Maria each having their own (albeit Maria's was, after all, the study since it was on the ground floor).

She blinked a little at a by now partially familiar click, looking up to see Yang setting her arm down on the chest of drawers. "Is it bothering you?"

"The twitching was a little, yeah," the blonde agreed. Then she turned to Blake and smiled. "Hey, Blake. Undress me?" she suggested, fluttering her lashes playfully.

Blake snorted softly. She hadn't quite noticed when the outrageous flirting in private returned, but she'd certainly been glad that it had. Things really did feel like they were back to normal, for all the differences. "Yang, come on," she replied with a little shake of the head and a grin.

"Blake."

Golden eyes blinked at the slightly more serious speaking of her name, looking up to see Yang still looking at her, purple eyes warm, a smile on the blonde's lips.

"Undress me. Please."

Blake swallowed.

"Ah... sure," she murmured, digging in her pocket and tucking a lien bill into the book before setting it aside. She had, after all, told Yang she could rely on her partner for help whenever she asked for it.

Blake stood and stepped over to Yang, first reaching up to unbuckle the collar of her jacket, then sliding the zipper down, trying to keep her eyes down on what she was doing, though that didn't help since she wound up looking right down at the blonde's cleavage. Fighting the urge to clear her throat, since that would have just made it obvious how nervous she was, she slid the jacket down and off of Yang's shoulders, half-tossing it aside. 

Deciding Yang's belt might be a little less embarrassing than going right for the orange tube top covering those generous breasts, Blake reached down to slide the leather through the buckle... and abruptly realized just what this felt like doing. She peeked up through her lashes, feeling her face heat even more at Yang smiling down at her.

But it wasn't a teasing smirk, or anything wicked. It was... very warm, and very languid, and those purple eyes were heavy-lidded and just watching her with contentment and desire.

Blake let the belt and the flaps held on with it drop to the ground. Her hands moved up, almost as if to actually remove the top, but they settled and turned into a gentle slide up Yang's sides. She leaned in, her head almost moving of its own accord, letting their bangs brush together.

It had almost happened, back at the Brunswick Farm. In the bathroom, guarding each other in the shower, Yang's gentle teasing, Blake feeling bare and vulnerable in a way she had never gotten used to, being naked in the light around others. But the situation had felt wrong, and dire, and they'd turned away from each other.

But Blake wasn't running anymore.

It wasn't a sudden thing, like a bursting dam or a crashing tide. More, if anything, a relaxing, a gentle settling that simply let the natural happen. Her head just tilted up, her lips pressed to Yang's, her eyes closed, and they were kissing. Yang's arm slid around her back and pulled her close, hugged her up, Blake's hands resting on the taller woman's shoulders.

It felt good. It felt right.

"Yang," Blake whispered softly, eyes still closed as she broke the kiss, brushing their foreheads together. "Tell me again... how you love me."

Yang smiled, raising her hand to stroke it gently over the back of her partner's head. "So deeply it goes down to a part of me I didn't know was there," she whispered back. "More than I know what to do with."

Silently, Blake slipped the orange top off of her partner... her lover... and let it drop to the floor, a quick motion of nimble fingers sending the blonde's pants to join it a moment later.

Blake's own clothes followed very quickly after.

They eased down onto the simple futon that had been set up before they arrived, the sheets clean and smelling gently still of the wash, their lips working against each other, naked bodies pressing against one another. It was slow, and soft, as their tongues brushed together, their fingers gently touched across skin.

They had both of them, on some level, been waiting for this for a long time. But just now, they had all the time in the world. And this was a moment to be cherished.

"Blake," Yang murmured, combing her fingers through that thick black hair. "Tell me how you love me."

Blake lifted up slightly, golden eyes gazing down at her friend. Her partner. Her love. Eyes the color of Yang's soul. Eyes the color of her own soul gazing back at her.

"Deeper than the darkest shadow," she whispered. "Clearer than the brightest star."

Flame and shadow came together again, kissed again. Did not destroy each other, but completed each other.

Ilia sighed, deciding to finally get up and push her futon over to the opposite wall, which was shared with Jaune and Oscar and which she was therefore a good 92% certain would not have any hanky-panky sounds coming from it.

She settled back down on it, resting a hand under her head and the other across her belly, staring up at the ceiling. It wasn't that she was jealous. She'd been sincere when she told Kai that she was happy for Blake, and Yang too for that matter. That she wanted everyone to be happy.

She was just lonely.

Casual sex had been the norm on Makarzia, at least among the Geneslicers for sure, and several times Ilia had gotten tempted when some of the female Slicers had flirted with her and insinuated they might like to teach her a few things. But... she wanted her first time to at least be with someone she had a connection with, even if it wasn't the love of her life.

And she wanted a love of her life.

After all she'd been through, she wanted an anchor. Something to hold her close and dear, the way Blake and Yang anchored each other, the way Ren and Nora did. She wanted that, those moments of looking into someone's eyes and thinking she was going to spend forever with them.

She knew, knew down to the heart of her, that some of the people around her now would be with her forever. She couldn't picture a future without Kai being there in it, Blake, Yang, Ruby, even Weiss and Reese and Grey, the more time she spent with all of them the more she felt like her life included these people all the way to its conclusion.

But she wanted someone to look at her like Blake and Yang looked at each other. Like... like they completed each other.

She wanted that very much.

Sighing, Ilia rolled over, and closed her eyes, and eventually drifted off to sleep. To dream of red eyes that weren't Kai's, slightly cool lips pressing to hers, and wild hair that drifted down over her body in the dark.

In the morning, the dream would be gone. But the longing would remain.

"Alright, everyone, we're off."

It was after breakfast, and Grey, Yang, and Ren were all standing in front of the rest of the group in the living room. Ren had been chosen as Team JNPR's hub on the idea that if necessary, he might be able to spread his Semblance through the comms instead of by physical touch. He looked his normally even self, for the most part, though Kai could see a little bit of tension around his eyes, the set of his mouth. Nora looked far more blatantly nervous, shuffling back and forth from one foot to the other and tugging on her own hands.

"Um, um... be safe, take care, be... right, said that," she murmured, clearing her throat.

"Don't worry, Hammertime, I'll bring him back to you, it'll just be a day," Grey said with a chuckle, draping his arms around the other two's shoulders. He gave a little wave with one hand, then tugged them in and pressed the button of his beacon.

_ Fwip. _

There was, insanely briefly, the sight of them rapidly receding into the distance, flicking away, but it was so barely-there that it was more like they simply disappeared. Here one moment, gone the next.

Jaune rubbed Nora's back gently as the orange-haired woman trembled. It was just a day separating two people who had never been apart, sure.

And who knew how many dimensions.


	46. Chapter 33

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Grey takes Yang and Ren to the Guildhall. Ren admits to the others in turn that he's feeling insecure about certain things. An alien lunch is had, and Yang visits a special sort of boutique.

∞, Daythree, 09:00 (Guildhall universal time)

Through long practice, Grey gave a roll of his arms and kept walking forward, keeping Yang and Ren moving as they came out of the portal. He was very practiced at this.

He had a reputation as a 'party animal' because he liked to bring, well, dates back to the Guildhall. Often prostitutes from backwater worlds across the multiverse, sometimes two or three at a time. Show off the big shocking wider multiverse, get them all worked up, take them back to his place.

Help them apply for residency.

The deep dark secret of Grey was that his little hints of nobility were not quite so recent as Kai thought. Most of his dates came from bad situations, places where they were in danger, being abused either by clients or pimps or whatnot. And applying for residency on the Guildhall was far easier than getting certified as a merc... all you really had to do was demonstrate an in-demand job skill, and sexual prowess counted as one of those.

So most had wound up staying prostitutes, at least for the initial time after their arrival. But the Guildhall was probably one of the better places to be one in the multiverse. Even the free healthcare was pretty damn good, and assault within the Guildhall's walls was one of those crimes the Guild Council took extremely seriously. Anyone who roughed up a sex worker on the Guildhall would have Guild Security on their asses no matter where in the multiverse they went.

And if you thought interdimensional mercenaries were scary, imagine the guys that were paid to make them taste dirt if they got too far out of line.

So yes, Grey had rescued a lot of prostitutes from bad situations. 

He'd still fucked them all, of course.

He hadn't been  _ that _ noble. He had, after all, been Grey Bloody Claws.

But now he was trying to be Grey Heliotrope again, and for just a moment he wondered where his old efforts were going to fit in with his new attempts to be a Huntsman. 

That was a post-Salem problem, he guessed.

But the practice paid off, Yang and Ren kept moving even as they gawked at the impressive press of bodies, both familiarly human and alien striding all around them, and at the arrival annex itself. Urge them along into the buffer zone between the arrival portals and the job desks, get them somewhere they could stand without being pressed.

"Whoa," Yang whispered, eyes wide as she stared around. Then, slowly, her lips curled up. " _ Awesome _ ."

Ren sat down a little hard, staring at not quite anything.

"Breathe, Lie," Grey said evenly, rubbing the other man's shoulder a bit.

"Yes. Certainly. I am breathing," Ren murmured breathlessly.

"This is straight-up  _ amazeballs _ ," Yang gushed in a half-volume voice, turning her head to follow the stride of a woman who appeared to be entirely naked, not that it mattered since her skin was made out of smooth, featureless silver that moved like flesh and blood. "Is that a-"

"She's probably some type of android or something, yeah," Grey chuckled. 

"Oh, Grey, I'd been hoping to catch you."

Grey's ears twitched at the familiar voice, turning. "Sybilla, hey, what's up?"

Yang and Ren both looked over at the woman approaching. Her hair was jaw-length, almost the same color of pink as Ren's eyes, her eyes a deep and striking blue color. She was pretty, probably of an age with Grey, though her expression was no-nonsense. Her outfit was a weird mixture of a coat and a dress, the wide, high collar showing off the skintight black garment she apparently wore beneath, the black-lined white coat having drapes over her arms and coming down in almost ankle-length flaps in front and back, leaving most of her legs bared, snug black straps hugging around her thighs and boots that matched the coat coming up to just below her knees.

"I'm working on one that looks like it has an infestation, I could use your particular skillset on clearing it out."

Grey chuckled, just a little ruefully. "Sorry, plate's kind of full at the moment. Maybe once I get my current thing wrapped up I'll give you a call. Ah, hey, this is Sybilla Longrade," he said with a glance at the other two. "Sybilla, this is Yang Xiao Long and Lie Ren."

Sybilla quirked an eyebrow even as she shook Yang's hand. "You're introducing people now? This is new. Pleasure to meet you," she added to Ren as she shook his hand. "If a bit of a surprise."

"Nice to meet you too." Yang grinned broadly. "So what badass super-cool mercenary thing do you do?"

The question seemed to both bemuse and delight Sybilla, blue eyes twinkling lightly as she said, "I reclaim space hulks and then auction them off on the Guild's interdimensional exchange."

"Space hulks?" Ren asked, brow furrowing a little.

"Particularly massive starships or space stations, sometimes the size of cities," Grey explained. "Sometimes they've got infestations of hostiles, and since my Semblance is  _ particularly _ suited to dealing with swarms of things, she hires me to help her out sometimes."

"Well this one's position-locked and I doubt anyone else is getting through that swarm of hardmeat to steal it from me, so it can wait," Sybilla agreed, giving Grey a nod. "Call me whenever, then, we'll wrap it up, usual split, bonus if we have to deal with a queen. Yang, Lie, good to meet you," she added politely before turning and walking off.

"Wow, you guys are just so... normal... talking about that stuff," Yang observed. Then she grinned and added, "It's kind of wild seeing you be so normal about it too, from the way Kai talked about your reputation I kind of figured people drew back from you in awe and fear."

Grey looked at her for a moment. Then he slipped a cigarette out of his pocket, tucked it into his lips and let it dangle just a bit, and said, "What, you mean like this?"

His face assumed a blank, distant, vaguely dissatisfied expression, eyes going flat and almost lifeless, and his hands tucked into his pockets as he turned and ambled forward, seemingly with no real goal in mind.

The crowd of mercenaries making their way through the portal annex immediately started forming an open pathway without ever quite looking at him.

Yang blinked. "Well damn." She exchanged a glance with Ren, then hurried to catch up with Grey before his wake closed up behind him.

As she caught up with him, Grey tongued the cigarette back up between his lips to actually get it at a more upright angle, life coming back to his eyes and a grin to his lips. "That more like what you were thinking?" he asked as he lit up.

"Dang dude, is that like, your 'bad mood' face?"

"That was one of my only two mood faces, but yeah that was the one where people knew I was not having one of my better days," he snorted softly as he puffed. "Didn't have a bunch of better days until Red introduced me to you lot, Sunny."

Yang made a bit of a face, not sure how she felt about anyone but her father referring to her with a diminutive that had 'Sunny' in it. But considering what Grey was doing for them, at his own expense, and that he was kind of her ride home, she decided not to make an issue of it. "Glad you're having better ones now, though."

"Says a lot about a man's life when getting dragged along to fight Physical Satan is a step up from his previous life choices," Grey said with a smokey snort. "But there y'go. Hey, Lie, you okay?"

"Yes," Ren said, a bit too quickly as his head snapped towards Grey from wandering off to watch some other mercs pass. "Why?"

"You seem kind of out of it, s'all. You good? How many fingers?" he asked, holding up his index finger.

Ren frowned just a little. "One. Why?"

"Pretty rare but some people get dimensional dysmorphia from any dimensional travel at all. The Guild beacons and portals are pretty good about cutting it down to almost nothing no matter what, but every so often, well. You sure you're okay?"

"I am fine, thank you," Ren said just a bit too stiffly.

"... Mmmkay. Well, c'mon, I've got a guy who owes me a favor, should be able to buy the psycomm stuff and get you guys your implants for cost."

Eventually Yang and Ren sat down in what looked astonishingly like a normal doctor's office waiting room as Grey went in to talk to the person who owed him a favor. Yang glanced back and forth, patting her hands on her knees, making a face as her right one twitched. Then she looked over at Ren, who was sitting and lightly scowling at the floor.

"So seriously, what's up?" she asked him.

He shot her a glance, one that was just a little angry. "Please do not start."

She pursed her lips, then shifted to the Mistralian her uncle had taught her. "<Please tell me what is wrong.>"

Ren stared at her for a moment... then sighed and leaned back in the chair, resting the back of his head against the wall and closing his eyes. "<Your accent is so Valean that it almost hurts.>"

Yang laughed a little, reaching over to take one of Ren's hands with her left. She gave him a warm look, then repeated, more gently, "<Please tell me what is wrong.>"

He said nothing for a moment, but did finally turn his hand over and grasp hers in return. "<I am a terrible person.>"

Yang blinked at that. "<That is very small head.>"

Ren actually let out a short laugh at that, sitting up and looking at her, smiling a little now. "You're doing that on purpose."

"<Of course I am, you idiot.>" Yang grinned and squeezed his hand, then let the smile fade as she switched back as well. "Why the hell would you say that though?"

"I..." Ren took a deep breath and let it out. "When I heard that I would be going on this... dimensional jaunt with you and Grey, and Nora would not be coming, the... the first thought I had was..."

Misery etched itself across his face. "'Finally'."

"... Ren," Yang whispered softly.

"I... hated myself for it the moment after, and I do in fact miss her a great deal even now, even having been parted barely an hour," he admitted, shaking his head. "Thinking of her being so far from me is almost physically painful. ... And yet..."

"You two really have never been apart, huh?" At Ren's sad nod, Yang let out a little huff. "Ren, y'know, it's okay to want some space sometimes. Most couples do. Almost nobody spends  _ all _ their time together."

"Nora and I always have," he replied quietly.

"And y'know, maybe it's good that you guys are getting some space, even if it's for a day," Yang urged gently. "Ren you can love her and still wanna find out who you are when she's not around."

"I... am not sure who that is. Lie Ren without Nora Valkyrie." Ren closed his eyes again. "I am the... quiet one. The stoic one. The un-fun one."

"You are  _ not _ the un-fun one," Yang quickly said with a frown.

"Nora is the fun one," he said simply, giving her a rueful smile. "Everyone knows that."

"Nora's tons of fun in a compact package, sure," Yang agreed breezily. "But anyone who thinks you're not fun just doesn't know a thing about you. Hey, remember when you helped me out with that dumpling recipe?" she said, almost suddenly.

"That was just cooking, Yang," he asserted, shaking his head. "One of my few skills, developed mostly to please Nora."

"... You really don't get what that day meant to me, do you?"

Ren blinked, shocked at the slight hurt in Yang's voice as he turned his head towards her. "I... do not, no, I am sorry," he admitted, the regret sincere.

Yang took a deep breath, met his eyes. "Ren, when I asked you to help me find what was 'missing' from how I was doing my dumplings, you spent all day in the kitchen with me helping. We talked, and we worked, and we even had a few laughs. And at the end of the day I'd figured out what I was doing wrong, and I have been incredibly, deeply grateful to you ever since."

"They... were just dumplings," Ren answered, a little less.

"Ren," Yang said, very softly. "Those were Summer's dumplings."

He stared at her.

"I could never find what was missing. I could never get 'em right. And I remember you being so mystified when I was overjoyed that we got them a little  _ wrong _ and that was what I was looking for," Yang said with a little laugh. "Supermom Summer may have been, but apparently she used just a little too much soy sauce and didn't dice the green onions quite finely enough. I had a lot of fun with you that day, and at the end of it I was  _ so _ grateful. And have been every time since I made those for Ruby and saw her face light up."

Gently, she put a hand on his head and drew him forward to put their foreheads together. "<Brother of my heart. You are a good and wonderful man. With or without your other half.>"

Ren didn't care that they were in a cool, sterile waiting room. He hugged his friend very tightly.

Grey and Ren sat with a seat separating them in the waiting room, Yang inside having one of her vertebrae replaced. Grey flipped through a few documents on his Guild comm, Ren simply apparently turning things over in his head.

"May I ask you something?"

"Yup," Grey replied without looking up from the screen.

"Why do you call me 'Lie'?"

Grey glanced over. "S'your name, isn't it?"

"It is, yes. However, everyone else refers to me as 'Ren'." Ren paused a beat, then added, "I am, after all, the singular Ren left. Though I suppose most don't think about that."

"Mm, well, guess I like to be different." Grey chuckled a little. "If everyone is gonna call you Ren, I guess I'll call you Lie just to set myself apart.'

"You seem to favor nicknames usually," the younger man noted.

"Oh? Is that it, you want a nickname?" Chuckling more warmly now, Grey clicked off his comm and set it on his leg to look over at the teenager.

Ren considered that for a moment, then looked at the Faunus. "I am not certain of that, but let us say that I did. What nickname would you give me?"

"Hmmmm." Grey regarded the Human for long moments, rubbing his chin... then pointing at him. "Sloth."

"I knew it," Ren muttered, his face going even more flat than usual.

Grey laughed. "In case you hadn't noticed, I'm not  _ terribly _ creative with my nicknames."

"They are not elaborate, no," Ren huffed, sitting back.

"Feeling indistinct?"

"A little," Ren admitted, bobbing his head once.

"Mm. That's proooobably natural," Grey mused aloud after thinking it over for a bit. "Not that I have a very normal childhood to compare it to, but I've listened to other mercs bitch about their kids enough to know that eventually most have some kind of identity crisis."

"I often feel very inadequate to the task we have assumed for ourselves," Ren admitted after several moments of silence. "Everyone else seems to stand up under the weight of it better, and I cannot help but wonder if it is because they are more comfortable in their... distinctness."

"And you just feel like an orphan from the middle of nowhere, right?" At Ren's head shooting over towards him, Grey gave him a slightly tired smile. "Sad to say that feeling never  _ quite _ goes away, kid. Not even when you become one of the scariest mercs in an organization full of very scary people. Saying that, I think that's part of being an adult."

"Dealing with such feelings of inadequacy?" Ren asked slowly.

"Well, that, but more realizing that all the adults you thought actually had a handle on things and were making informed decisions were all full of bullshit too," Grey snorted.

Ren blinked at that.

Then cupped his hand to his chin, looking down thoughtfully.

Yang tilted her head one way, then the other, then wrinkled her nose.

"What are you doing?"

"Waiting for it to itch."

Grey snorted. "Ilia's a bit of a hypochondriac as far as her implant's concerned. Either that or it's a result of getting hers done on Makarzia. This is a Guild level facility, even if it's third party, yours is top notch stuff. Cost enough," he added in a mutter.

"So what, everything on this place is just super high quality stuff?"

"Well, no," Grey allowed. "But I wouldn't use the guy if his wasn't. Not to brag but I'm decently wealthy up here, I've kind of got my pick of who I go to. But beyond that, the Guildhall's an incredibly competitive market for third parties like him. You do shoddy work and there's always someone who's just waiting to pounce on your potential customers to do less shoddy work for either the same price or only slightly more."

"Invisible hand of the market and all?" Yang said with a grin and a waggle of her right hand, then wrinkled her nose as it twitched on her again.

"The Guild Council's very big on invisible hands of all kinds, yeah, they're as hands-off as they can manage and still keep order. That still bothering you?" Grey added, pointing at the prosthetic.

"Yeah, I'm still running on scroll parts, guess I will be 'til we get to Mantle, sounds like," Yang allowed with a sigh.

"... Mm. Well, after Ren gets done, let's get some lunch and then see about that." At Yang's blink, Grey grinned at her. "Your surgery took a lot less time than I thought, so it looks like we'll have a few hours yet to kick around up here and still get back by evening. We can make a stop at another place I know of."

"Don't."

Yang whipped her head around from what she'd been staring at. "Don't what?"

"Don't get gagh, no matter how much you want to brag about having a really alien lunch. Trust me, if you don't eat it just right, you don't wanna deal with the resulting intestinal parasites, and the flavor profile for human-type tongues is not worth the effort of eating it right."

They were in what could only be described as a mall food court if it filled the entire mall, and the mall were particularly large. It seemed to be grouped together generally by the dimension of origin, with them currently standing in front of one of the restaurants manned by a large, portly man with dark skin and what looked like an armor plate under the skin of his forehead.

A fair number of the dishes in the trays in front of him were squirming.

"Fine then, what do you suggest, mister expert?" the blonde huffed.

Grey eyed her, then smirked and headed down a few restaurants, approaching a station manned by a slightly severe-looking woman with ridges on the bridge of her nose. "Get some hasperat?"

"Human regular, human spicy, human extra spicy, Bajoran regular..." She paused, then quirked an eyebrow. "Or Bajoran spicy?"

"Give her one of each from human extra spicy on up," Grey replied.

"Why is the spicy ranked by species?" Yang asked, raising both eyebrows.

"Same reason there's 'regular spicy or Vacuo spicy'."

"You intrigue me, sah," the blonde said immediately, purple eyes sparkling.

"Thought I might. A-thankyou," Grey added, tapping his comm against a panel before accepting a tray with what looked a lot like three wrapped burritos on it. "How about you, Lie, any thoughts?"

"Hm. I... would like to try something different than we have on Remnant," he said slowly. Then glanced back at the stand with the squirming food. "... But not that different."

"Hmmmm... okay."

A bit later, Ren frowned down at the table. "This appears to be... fish soup. What did you call it, again?"

"'Cullen Skink'. It uses a kind of smoked fish we don't have on Remnant and the culture it comes from doesn't have a clear parallel, try it."

Meanwhile, Yang had unwrapped the silver roll labeled 'HES' and eyed the cut-in-half thing inside. It... looked a lot like a burrito, except the tortilla wasn't quite the same. She picked it up and took a bite, chewed, shrugged. "Yeah I guess that's about Vacuo spicy or something," she said nonchalantly, setting it down and starting to unwrap the 'BR' stickered one.

"Yang, be careful," Ren said in a mildly worried tone, feeling his sinuses open slightly from across the table.

Scoffing lightly, Yang took a large bite of the thing, which seemed to be layered mostly with something somewhat lettuce-like and dripping with sauce. She chewed, nose flaring a little, her face flushing the tiniest bit and a faint sheen appearing on her forehead. "Huh.  _ That's _ spicy, yeah, I guess."

She eyed the last wrapper, purple eyes flashing.

"Yang plz," Ren murmured, putting a hand to his face.

But she'd already unwrapped it, and before Ren could dramatically shout 'No!' in slow motion and dive across the table to snatch it from her, she'd chomped down on it.

Yang went completely still.

Slowly, her pupils dilated.

A single drop of blood trickled out of her nose. 

Then she toppled forward across the table.

"... Is she dead?" Ren asked flatly.

Grey eyed her for a moment, Yang's face hidden by the thick blanket of her hair. Then he watched as she pushed the rest of the half of the hasperat under her hair, and munching noises ensued. "She's fine."

Ren sighed heavily, then ate a spoonful of the Cullen Skink.

"... It is good," he said simply, bobbing his head.

"Glad y'like it."

Once Yang had cleaned up a bit in a restroom and gotten herself cooled down, she followed along with Grey as he led her and Ren to the elevator and back out. "So I'm guessing you didn't mean lunch was the special place?"

"Nope. Here," he said, gesturing towards something that looked like a high-end men's boutique on the outside, albeit without anything in the display, as some particularly snooty places seemed to do. The inside similarly looked like one of the entryways of such a store, with red curtains and a few leather chairs for seating. The moment they entered an extremely tall, very lean man with a sharp, angular head stepped out from the curtains directly ahead, wearing an extremely nice suit in a faintly lustrous dark silver color, his eyes glowing faintly with a not-quite-natural blue color.

"Good afternoon, sirs and madam. How may I help you today?" he said in an almost impossibly smooth, refined tone, tucking his hands behind his back.

"We'd like something in a right arm, combat model," Grey answered, Yang blinking and looking over at him in surprise.

"Most excellent, sir, form factor?" 

"Humanoid, standard, proooobably a bit on the artistic side?" Grey glanced at Yang and flashed her a grin. "We'd like something in weapon-matching, maybe with accessories, and we need to match power sources so that it can use this," he continued, rummaging in one of his pockets and coming up with a small vial of yellow Lightning Dust fitted with a power connector, passing it over. "And the arm needs to be able to channel an energy field like her current one can."

"Most excellent, sir." The man in the suit accepted the Dust vial, the irises of his eyes changing shape subtly several times as he looked at it. "This should pose no difficulty. May I?"

"Feel free."

"Would ma'am care to accompany me to the arm room?" the man in the suit suggested, slipping back a bit and gesturing to the curtain with both hands.

Yang seemed just a little lost, glancing at Grey again.

"Go ahead, Sunny," he urged, still grinning. "This is one of the best prosthetics boutiques on the Guildhall. It's just like getting a suit fitted, tell him what you want and he'll make it happen."

"Most certainly, ma'am."

"Um... right." Yang nodded slowly, then stepped through the curtain. She found herself in a hallway made of more of them, and was joined by the strange man in the suit a moment later.

"My name is Liam, ma'am, if you please. This way," he continued, walking a short distance and pulling aside a stretch of curtain. 

Yang stepped through and stared a little. It was a very long room with two rows of cases on simple pedestals, each one containing... an arm. Well, a prosthetic, obviously. Or Kai had called them "cyberlimbs". Her head was still reeling a bit as Liam stepped around in front of her and steepled his fingers.

"Forgive me, ma'am, if it seems an indelicate question, but you understand the necessity in this instance. How long has it been since..." He gestured slightly towards her arm with a delicate flick of the fingers of one hand before steepling them.

"Uh... I guess... not quite a year," Yang murmured.

"I see, and you are wearing your first prosthetic?" At Yang's slow nod, he held out his hands. "May I examine it? You need not remove it."

"Ah, sure." Yang turned her right side slightly towards him and lifted her arm towards him, watching as he carefully rested his fingertips against the other side, head turning in slow, smooth, almost mechanically regular short sweeps back and forth.

"Hm. Hm. My my, quite a shame."

Yang frowned. "It's been pretty good to me."

"Ah, forgive me, ma'am, I did not intend to disparage its quality." Liam straightened, spreading his hands slightly. "Rather I meant that it seemed the artist in question who fashioned this particular prosthetic seems to have been hindered by the materials available to him and certain other technological limitations, as well as perhaps a shortage of available time. I would most dearly like to offer this individual a position with our design team. Although admittedly there is a certain sense of aesthetics lacking. It has been damaged?"

"Huh? Oh, ah, not quite, someone needed a part from it for their eyes and somebody else worked up a temporary fix."

"Ah. And the color, it is to your satisfaction?"

Yang considered a moment, actually finding herself starting to imagine what she would have done with the arm if she'd had input on it from the start. "Maybe... metallic gold all over, instead of the black bits." She paused, then grinned. "And something with flames?"

" _ Lovely _ , ma'am. Now, I understand this is to be a combat model, would you prefer added melee or ranged functionality?"

Starting to feel enthusiasm build, Yang turned her left towards him instead and transformed Celica. "Could you match this?"

Liam made a soft, almost appreciative 'hm!' sound as he leaned in to examine the weapon, cupping one hand over the curled fingers of the other as he examined it. "Quite a lovely piece, all told. Do you know the designer?"

"She's standing in front of you," the blonde said, purple eyes twinkling.

" _ Really _ ? My congratulations, this is a lovely example of collapsible form factor. You are happy with its functionality?"

"I've been pondering some design upgrades that I can't really afford yet, but my fighting style wouldn't really change."

"Hm, so, short range to mid-range blasting augmented melee, yes?" At Yang's nod he turned. "I believe we can accommodate you. This way, please." After a short walk, he turned and gestured elegantly with one hand. "I believe any of the limbs in this area would be suitable."

Yang nodded slowly, walking along amongst the cases, sort of trying to adjust to the idea that she was now... modular. That she could just pick out a new limb like other people had a suit tailored.

... It was, strangely, not a bad feeling. The sudden realization that she could have something that was fitted to her taste, crafted with her input from the start... well, it didn't exactly make her feelings on the subject "all better", but it was buoying in its own way.

The arms were all in a simple flat white, but she tried to imagine them gleaming with gold chrome, shining on her arm. She finally stopped in front of a case, looked in at it. The prosthetic in the case went up to the shoulder, obviously a display model to show what the whole limb would look like, but it was already gorgeous. Made of gentle planes with slightly rounded angles, far less trying to perfectly resemble the human form and more using the general shape of it to create something else.

The fingers were slender, the tips narrowing to slick near-wedges with more of those rounded planes, the tips just faintly curved to blunt them, the seams between the knuckles virtually invisible. It looked like something that could take off and fly through space as much as it looked like an arm.

"This one."

"Lovely choice, ma'am, one of our art lab's best. Now, of course all of our combat models come with heavy reinforcement, which we will use to make sure you can channel your energy field through it, and all of our limbs come with high sensory feedback, controlled by a limited AI to insure there is no overload and the information you receive is understandable."

"Wait..." Yang blinked. "You're saying I'll be able to...  _ feel _ again?"

"Your current prosthetic has only pressure feedback?" At Yang's numb nod, Liam smiled. "Yes, ma'am, your sense of touch with your new arm will, in fact, be more varied and sensitive compared to your biological limb. Now, as to combat extras, perhaps keep it simple... a variable ammunition-switching system and, let us say... a grappling hook?"

Yang's eyes flashed delightedly. "Oh yeah."

"I shall begin writing up the order immediately. It will take approximately an hour to customize your new limb for you. ... Ah, I almost forgot," he murmured, turning back and again steepling his fingers. "There is one more optional function that is popular in our arm models."

Yang blinked.

"Damn," Yang whispered, eyes glittering in delight as she flexed the fingers of her new arm. It looked just as amazing as she'd thought it would in gold chrome. The silver flames coming up the forearm were just almost invisible until they caught the light, and shined in faintly holochromatic colors when they did.

"'Damn' is right," Grey murmured as he looked at the screen displaying the total. Then he sighed and grinned a little. "Oh well, you'll pay me back someday."

"I definitely will, just say what," Yang said eagerly with a nod.

"... The money." Grey gave her a look, raising his eyebrows. "I mean, literally pay me back for the arm when you can, Sunny."

"... Oh." She blinked, wondering why that hadn't occurred to her. "Uh, right, sure, okay."

"Hardcopy receipt, sir?" Liam asked primly.

"Yes, please."

As they walked out of the boutique, Ren helpfully carrying the shoulder-bag they'd been given for Yang's previous arm, Grey ran the receipt through his fingers, looking through the itemized list of charges. 'Well, looks like he cut me a break on some of this, at least, and looks like he even used his employee discount, I'll have to buy that guy a drink sometime or something. Let's see, reinforcement alteration, variable ammo system, grav-lock grapple cable, full sensor feedback system, AI control unit, vi-'

He slowly looked over at Yang and quirked an eyebrow.

She was very carefully not looking at him, her cheeks red.

Grey smirked. He was absolutely going to give her crap over this at some point in the future. But for now, he said, "Well kids, we're drawing in on that time, but we've still got a little while left before evening. Any other thoughts, requests, desires?"

Before Yang could speak up, Ren said, "I would like to do something... fun."

"Hm. Something fun, huh?" Grey stopped and rubbed his chin, thinking. Most of what he'd used to do for fun was... ... well, he couldn't take these two for that, after Nora broke his legs so he couldn't get away, Blake would go to stabby-town.

So something fun. Hm hm hm. What did people who weren't deeply damaged and dysfunctional do for fun? ... Did he even know any of those? 

... Wait. There was one thing on the Guildhall that was almost universally agreed on to be fun. It was usually more of an all-day thing, but hell, they could pop over for four hours or so and still get back in time for a late dinner.

"Okay, I know what we'll do. But we'll have to stop by a sportswear store first," Grey said with a grin.

Ren pursed his lips in something dangerously close to a pout as he gazed down the opening of the large, heavy-duty plastic tube, his voice echoing down it slightly along with the rushing of the water. "This seems somewhat childish."

"C'mon, Ren, Grey's right, this's gonna be super fun!" Yang declared, grinning brightly, purple eyes twinkling. She'd bought a black and yellow one piece 'competition' style swimsuit, leaving it fitting closely against her body and riding high on her hips. "I've never even  _ seen _ waterslides like this!"

"Yup, this place is routinely scored the second best waterpark in the entire multiverse," Grey declared, grinning as he folded his arms over his bare chest, the beautiful Faunus man wearing a pair of trunks in blue and grey, glancing around at the artificial sky and sprawling arcing tube-scattered vistas of Waterloo 2.

"Huh, what's the best?"

"Waterloo 1. Obviously."

Ren gave both a dubious look, clad only in his own pink and green trunks, eyeing the tube again. He had to admit, Yang was literally right, he'd never seen such waterslides... the only kind he'd ever seen were plastic versions of playground slides with a hose attachment. The park they were in took up far too much room, used far too much water, and was, well, far too encouraging of fear response (to judge by the screeches of various other people rushing down the slides) to ever function on Remnant.

But. He'd asked. And Grey had already paid for their passes. It seemed ungrateful in the extreme to back out.

So, taking a deep breath, he gripped the pole above the entrance, swung his lower body forward, and dropped into the water.

And shot through the tube like a bullet. 

_ Vital Signs - The Boys And Girls Are Doing It _

He was suddenly flying and splashing both at the same time, and before he knew it was yowling out at the top of his lungs, too shocked by the speed and the fact that he was being thrown through loops along the curves of the slide as well as arcing up and around through its spirals to even think about controlling his response. 

It lasted an eternity and was over in a second, Ren firing out the end of the tube and crashing down into the pool at the end, the impact a shock and the cold water surrounding him also instantly hitting him like a salve from the excitement and shock, and he came up spluttering, then clutching the sides of his heads and laughing incredulously.

"Oh my  _ gods _ !"

He turned and scrambled to the side, hauling himself out of the waist-height pool and dashing off, flinging water droplets in his wake, soaked ponytail sticking to his skin.

He had to go  _ again _ !

Again and again he rushed up steps, occasionally getting scolded at from range by employees, ducking his head like an abashed child before running again almost the moment they turned their backs. He hurled himself down slide after slide, wide ones that let him twirl and twist around horizontally, long open steep ones that needed fat inflatable donuts to sit on to go down, long gradually sloping ones with foam boards to simulate surfing.

Again and again he gave up any real control, just living in the moment, letting out every howl and shriek and laugh that came to mind in the throes of the slides, his heart racing even though he was ultimately safe, his skin tingling, his senses alive.

He got water up his nose, in his ears, some of it stung his eyes.

He never wanted it to end.

Though it was only a few hours, he felt pleasantly exhausted as he sat at a table, slumped a bit, sucking an extremely overpriced sugary drink through a ridiculously elaborate straw.

Yang and Grey padded up to him, the blonde's hair actually looking marginally straight for once with its current weight of water, Grey's sleek body glistening with the damp. "So? How was it?" Yang asked with a grin.

Ren looked at them, thinking of how to describe it. One of the first times he'd just completely abandoned himself to fun. Let himself do nothing but have fun, just him, just for himself. A first experience that, for the rest of his life, would be his and his alone.

He smiled.

"I want to bring Nora here someday."


	47. Chapter 34

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> With Grey, Yang, and Ren gone to the guildhall, the rest of Team RBWY and Team KACH drag Nora along on a girl's day out to cheer her up (also because most of them just want to). Gradually Nora's confidence is built, and not just hers. As the day ends, Kai sets off on a solo mission, which results in an appearance by a very special guest star.

January 11, 244 AGW, 9:07 AM (Remnant 4482)

Jaune rubbed Nora's back gently as the orange-haired woman trembled. It was just a day separating two people who had never been apart, sure.

And who knew how many dimensions.

Near-instantly, Kai clapped her hands down on Nora's shoulders. "Okay, let's get going!"

"Um?" Nora blinked, turning to face the crimson-haired girl. "Get going where?"

"Girl's Day Out, of course," Weiss declared evenly, smiling. 

"Nooooo boys!" Ruby added teasingly, shaking a finger at Jaune and Oscar.

"We're going to go out for coffee, then we're going clothes shopping, then there's this makeup boutique that has  _ great _ ratings online," Weiss continued, holding up her scroll. "Somewhere in there we'll have lunch, and we might either see a sickeningly romantic weepy movie or get our hair done, whatever takes our fancy!"

"Um... guys... I appreciate it," Nora said, smiling a little wanly as she twiddled her fingers together. "I just don't know if I'm in the mood, y'know?"

Then she blinked as Reese stepped forward and reached up to snag her by the collar, hauling her down the slight distance to put them eye-to-eye.

"Valkyrie. If I'm going to girl clothes stores, a makeup store, some damn romance movie, and a hair salon, you are damn well coming too." The green-haired girl hauled her almost nose-to-nose, hissing " _ Don't leave me alone with them! _ "

"... Ooooo-kaaaaay," Nora said slowly, taking Reese's wrist between thumb and forefinger and pulling her hand away. "No more second pot of coffee for you in the mornings."

"Rejected."

Kai laughed. "C'mon, Nora, I've never done one of these before, and neither has Ilia."

"Honestly most of us haven't," Weiss allowed, folding her arms. "It'll be a new thing. It's better than sitting around here all day."

"I... guess," Nora allowed slowly. "I mean, if it's really that important to you guys."

"You wanna come, Maria?" Kai asked with a glance aside.

"Mmm, walking all over the city, going into stores with clothing designed for fifty-year-olds at most, buying makeup for my wrinkly old skin, sitting on a movie theater seat for hours and then having some salon smartass ask me which shade of blue I want. Sounds  _ delightful _ but I think I'll pass."

The redhead snorted. "Suit yourself, you grumpy old cuss," she said warmly, Maria smirking in reply.

They all clattered down the front steps and headed for the hovertrolley stop, Ruby already announcing, "We have to get pumpkin spice coffee, it's  _ mandatory _ !"

"Pumpkin spice season is over, Ruby, it's peppermint season now."

"A-aw!"

"Honestly a little surprised you're so gung-ho for this," Ilia spoke up, looking over at Ruby. "You seem kind of a tomboy yourself."

"Hey, would a tomboy be wearing this cool combat skirt,  _ huh _ ? I like dresses too! Just not, like, ladystilts! Or... dancing! Or some other stuff! ... Dresses and makeup are kind of okay I guess!"

* * *

"I think all of us had a stereotype in mind of what a girl's day out was supposed to be like, and (almost) none of us minded living the stereotype. Well, one of us was less enthusiastic. ... One outright hated the idea but went along with it for the rest of us's sake.

"Let's be honest, while we'd come up with the idea for a girl's day out to perk Nora up, it was as much for us as her. The main goal was to get her cheery despite being so far from Ren, sure, but secondary was all of us actually getting some bonding and healing time together.

"I found myself actually eager for the girl's day out. Partly because I'd never gotten to be a girl. I'd had to be a woman from the first day I walked into that apartment and Ico started picking me out a sword and Niobe discussed my upcoming strength training regime. That was just life for them, and for me.

"So I got to go out and be a girl for a day. And I was looking forward to it. And while it took most of the day for Nora to shed her mope entirely, we did find something that perked her up pretty damn fast."

* * *

"They have pancake-flavored  _ coffee?! _ " Nora squealed, clapping her hands to her cheeks, eyes glittering.

"Decaaaaf," Ruby whispered to the barista, silver eyes just slightly desperate.

"Wow this place is pretty damn cool," Kai admitted, scanning the vast list of coffee flavorings. "I will have... the cherry cobbler flavor, add a double shot."

Everyone rattled off their orders bit by bit and retired to a nearby cluster of tables, talking about the upcoming day, what they'd decided to look for. Qrow had actually been able to get paid for the Grimm they killed on the train and in the woods on their way to Argus (the Apathy apparently didn't count), and shared it out among the younger group, declaring it "allowance" and chuckling when he got tongues stuck out at him. So they had a decent amount of money to play around with.

Kai and Blake got up to retrieve the party's order when it was called out, passing out the cardboard cups and sitting again. "Do you think we could-" Blake started to say.

"Hit a bookstore?" most of the rest of the group sing-songed, Blake's ears laying down a bit as she glowered at them, cheeks pink.

"Did you practice that?"

"Only for like fifteen minutes before you came downstairs this morning," Reese chirps.

"Well we should. We don't know how long the flight to Atlas will be, if we get a slower transport," Blake huffed.

"Point," Kai allowed, glancing over. "Hey, Nora, what sort of books do you like?"

"Huh?" The orange-haired girl blinked, actually glancing around as if trying to find anyone else named Nora that Kai could possibly have meant, then pointing at herself.

"Yeaaah you."

"I, um. Well I guess I liked that book Blake gave me for Solstice," she allowed. "It was okay."

"Oh, you liked 'Star Slayer'?" Blake said, ears perking back up. "Which was your favorite part?"

Nora's eyes glittered. Just a little. "When Slayn  _ kicked _ down the door and started unloading on the pirates full-auto, roaring for his lost love!"

Blake laughed. "That bit is sooooo good, yes!"

"'Star Slain' is better," Reese said in a bit of a mutter.

Blake dragged in a long breath of outrage, eyes widening. "You  _ read _ that noncanon  _ trash _ ?!"

"It is  _ too _ canon, there is  _ no _ official statement disavowing Slaya as being Slayn's daughter!"

"There's  _ more _ ?!" Nora gasped happily.

"No!

"Yes!"

"Quip blog!"

"Aesthetic blog!"

'I wonder if Reese is sincerely that into the book or just trying to get Blake to kick her ass again?' Kai mused, sipping her fruit-flavored coffee calmly as she watched Reese and Blake struggle briefly, coming dangerously close to bumping the table and making the coffee wobble.

"I didn't know you liked sci-fi, Nora," Ruby spoke up cheerfully, while Weiss seemed to be trying to pretend she didn't know any of them despite sitting directly between Ruby and Blake.

"I guess I didn't either until I read that book," Nora allowed. "I mean, I read some of Jaune's comics now and then, and those were good too?"

"Can I borrow that book when we get back?" Ilia asked.

"Oh, uh, sure!" Nora seemed slightly bewildered, and Kai could guess why. She was having a conversation that in no way involved or related to Lie Ren, and was actually enjoying it.

Which was probably also why she looked a little guilty.

'You'll get through it, tough stuff,' Kai thought with a grin. 'Might even be better for it by the end of the day.'

"Excuse me," Ilia asked as she carried the off-the-shoulder sweater up to the nearest store clerk. "Do you have this in a smaller size and black?"

"Oh?" The clerk turned, then smiled. "Oh, but you have such lovely brown skin! You know, a dark orange or a deep blue would probably really make your skin glow or your eyes pop!"

Ilia gave her a flat expression. And then sent a brief flurry of colors flitting across her hair, skin, and eyes.

The clerk yelped and hopped back, eyes widening... then she cleared her throat and smoothed out her dress. "A size small in black, then?"

"Please."

Kai pressed a hand over her mouth and looked aside, shoulders shaking a little.

"I said  _ no _ !"

"Ruby, come on, they're  _ exactly _ your color and size, do you know how rare that is?!"

"I don't care, I said no ladystilts and I meant it!"

"Just  _ try them _ you dolt!"

Ruby pursed her lips and narrowed her eyes at Weiss, arms folded over her chest. Then, slowly, she smirked.

"Well if you want me to be  _ that _ much taller than you."

Weiss blinked at her.

Then turned around and set the high heels back on their rack.

"Well we just won't mention this again will we?"

"Deal."

"Kai, what do you think of this on me?"

"Hm?" Kai turned around to see Blake holding a yellow turtleneck up against her front, stretching it along one arm. 'Huh, that's unusual, not often you see someone wearing colors other than their... ... hahahaha they finally fucked didn't they?' Kai smirked, and something in her face must have told Blake she'd figured it out because she blushed. But Kai tried to honestly consider the question, eyeing the shirt and picturing Blake actually wearing it.

"Kinda stark just to wear on its own, I think?" she offered.

Blake seemed relieved that she wasn't going to say anything. "So a vest or something?"

"Yeah a vest would probably look good with that. Black vest, maybe, little bit of yellow accent on it, make you look like a cute little bumblebee," she declared breezily, turning away to hide her snickering as Blake spluttered.

'I'm such a shit.'

"Kai, how's it look?" Ilia asked, stepping out of the dressing room and showing off the sweater.

"Oh hey, that's great, Rainbow," Kai assured her, walking over and grinning. "You look like a respectable daytimer with night creature level style."

"Heheh, thanks."

"Hey Kai check this out!" Reese called from across the store, making several of the clerks give slightly exasperated looks in her direction.

"Hm?" Kai strolled over, then stared at what Reese was holding in her hands. It was silver and sparkly and gorgeous. It wasn't sequined or anything, it was just... shiny, and just very slightly iridescent. She took it from the smaller woman and looked it over... a loose long-sleeved top, obviously designed to drape a fair bit. "Damn, nice."

"I know right?" Reese said with a grin. "You don't really dress your color much so when I saw it I thought of you."

"You guys really are into the colors thing," Kai noted, even as she turned towards a mirror to hold the shirt up against herself. "Do you really feel like you have to or something?"

"Nah it's more like we  _ get _ to wear our colors see since it's a big deal and we almost couldn't. It's like you can wear any color you want but if you wear what you want but it's also your color it's like it's saying something about you y'know?"

"What's this say about me, then?" Kai asked rather wryly, glancing aside at Reese.

The green-haired girl blinked.

"That you're gorgeous," she replied, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.

Kai could feel her cheeks and ears heat.

"Hahaha all the times I've said how hot you are and that one gets you?!" Reese couldn't help but laugh.

"Yeah, well... you had a really good lead-in that time," Kai murmured, suddenly feeling almost shy as she folded the shirt up. "Damn though you smooth little bitch, I guess I'll buy it."

"Heh."

"These are pretty but they seem sort of flimsy," Nora admitted as she lifted up the corner of a pink dress, rubbing the cloth between her thumb and forefingers.

"Well it's just casual clothes, Nora, it won't feel like armorweave," Weiss scoffed.

Kai blinked. "Wait, armorweave, what?"

Slowly, the rest of the group turned to stare at her.

"Armorweave. High durability fiber. Used as either a lining between fabric layers or the clothes are just made out of it," Blake said slowly.

"The really good stuff is made in a process using Gravity Dust to fuse the armored threads together so it's all a solid surface and then you can layer other Dust on top of it even," Reese added, plucking at the sleeve of Weiss's dress, Weiss flapping a hand to shoo her off.

"... Huh," Kai said.

"Kai. Have you been fighting this entire time in just clothes?" Ruby squeaked.

"Um." The redhead blinked a few times. "I thought... everyone... was?"

"Oh Brothers how are you not dead?" Blake murmured, putting a hand to her face.

Kai pursed her lips. Then looked over at Ilia.

"I thought you knew that's why I kept wearing my old Remnant outfit on Makarzia," the younger woman said sheepishly.

"Well hell."

"I guess at this point we might as well wait until we get to Atlas to get you a proper Huntress outfit then," Weiss said with a bit of a snort. 

"Yeah, guess so." Kai shrugged, then grinned and held up Reese's find in front of her. "Hey guys, whattya think?"

"That's  _ lovely _ ," Blake enthused, golden eyes sparkling.

* * *

"They all said nice things, and for a few minutes they focused on helping me pick an outfit before we all turned our attention on Nora. Heh, she never had a chance.

"Well, they all said nice things except for Weiss. At first I was expecting it, her eyes lit up, and then she sort of... shut down. Turned away and decided to look at shoes by herself for a bit. It confused me, and it hurt me, but I figured it wasn't a big deal at the time, probably she just thought the shirt looked a bit cheap or something.

"I wish I'd known. There probably hadn't been much I could have done, and things would change for her before the day was over, but still. Weiss spending even ten more hours in pain, that's something I'd change if I could."

* * *

Kai turned back and forth in front of the mirror, eyeing the loose, drape-y silver shirt, the simple bright red cargo pants, and the boots Qrow had given her because she couldn't quite make herself take them off. But she'd added some purely decorative red fingerless gloves.

She was completely unsuited for combat at the moment. And that was entirely of her own free will.

She loved it.

"Nora, come on, it looks  _ great _ !"

"I just... I don't know..."

Ruby, apparently having decided she was done playing, threw open the curtain of the dressing room and hauled Nora out, grinning at everyone. Nora flushed, stumbling just a little before standing up. The dress was pink, with short sleeves that would necessitate a jacket considering the chill outside, but it was just slightly formal and much more mature in styling than her usual choices. The skirt came all the way past her knees, and the cut accentuated her body shape very subtly.

She looked like a housewife. But, in a good way.

Kai could suddenly picture Nora attending parent-teacher conferences and being the hub of neighborhood bake sales, which viewer shows had assured her were intensely important duties in the far-off land of suburbia. And probably occasionally hauling out Magnhild to slam down on the lawn and declare to the entire block 'With this hammer, I rule!'

"Guys, c'mon, this isn't me, is it?" Nora said with a self-conscious laugh, pressing down the front of the skirt (as if it needed it).

"It's as 'you' as you want it to be," Weiss assured her with a smile.

"Nora, there can be a lot of 'yous', you know," Blake said with a grin, holding up the little pink dress that they'd found to suggest to her as party wear. "That's part of the fun of being out on your own and shopping like this. You get to try something new on, take a look in the mirror, and picture the you that would wear it. And decide if you like that person."

"... Fuckin' fine," Reese suddenly muttered, snatching something from nearby and storming into the dressing room, yanking the curtain closed.

Ilia blinked. "What's with her?"

Eyes drifted back to Nora though as she stepped over to the mirror, examining the image of herself looking mature and mainstream. She turned back and forth a little, watching the swish of the long skirt, taking a look at the subtle but classy emphasis of her bust and waist. Took the sides of the skirt in hand, swayed it back and forth a little to watch the motion.

Kai wondered if she, too, was picturing herself ruling a PTA meeting with an iron fist.

"I think I like it," she said, turquoise eyes starting to sparkle a bit.

Then everyone glanced over as the dressing room curtain slid open again. Reese stepped out hesitantly, having actually changed out of her hoodie for once. Instead she'd apparently found an overlong thick sweater with a high, wide collar that draped in front, probably left over from Solstice to judge by the particularly vibrant green. On her it came all the way to the knees, and she'd used a purple scarf as a sash to make a belt, effectively turning it into a dress, the sash draping wide over one hip and the tails settled over the other.

"I look like a kid, don't I?" she huffed.

"Nope," Ruby answered instantly, silver eyes sparkling. "You look super pretty."

"Gorgeous," Kai added with a smile.

Reese blushed and ducked her head, muttering something inaudible as she stepped back inside and yanked the curtain closed again.

* * *

"It wasn't that she actually wanted to dress girly, I don't think. Reese liked her style and didn't much care for skirts and that was basically just her.

"I think she just wanted to know she could do it if she wanted to, and not look like a kid playing dressup.

"And I think for the first time Nora started imagining something for herself beyond being a Huntress. Those little hints of 'normal' life most of her friends took for granted. Nora had gone right from an orphanage to Beacon Academy to life on the road, none of it very conducive to making someone feel like there was a semblance of a day-to-day life waiting for them on the other side of things.

"I had very little doubt that in her mind, as she announced with Magnhild in hand that she was queen of the neighborhood association, Ren was standing on the porch, wearing a cardigan and reading glasses, puffing on a curved pipe and nodding solemnly in agreement. But the point was that it was her fantasy, her life to imagine, her choice to put him there.

"Her life was hers, and every dress she picked out and version of her that she imagined to go with it was another life she claimed for herself.

"Almost makes clothes shopping sound cool, don't it?"

* * *

"I'm guessing this is one of those times people don't always go right with their colors, huh?" Kai said with a grin, watching as one of the makeup boutique's employees dusted some faint blush on Blake's cheeks.

"Black or white might be a  _ little _ much here, yes," Blake said, slightly glossed pink-purple lips curling in a smile. "Luckily I have purple to lean on too. But some adherences to skin tone and style definitely have to be made."

"Do tell," Ilia said dryly from where she was looking at the section of skin care products, essentially the only thing in the store that she had any use for.

Blake laughed softly, then her ears perked up a bit as she was shown a mirror. "Oh that's nice, yes. Could I see some other shades of eyeshadow too?"

"I have," Reese commented as she lifted a thick black eyeliner pencil. "A ton of this stuff."

"What, makeup?" Kai asked, turning towards her.

"Yup. Won a raffle once at this little mini-fair thing a shopping district in Mistral was having, and it turned out to be a makeup collection... though you had to go claim it a bit at a time," she added with a snort. "I guess that was part of their ploy to get people coming back. Well I don't turn down free stuff so every week I zipped on back picked up my latest free makeup thing brought it back to the room and set it up on the dresser. Who'd you think all that belonged to?"

Kai scratched the side of her cheek. "I mean, Arslan's eyeliner game  _ is _ really on point, from all the pictures."

"True dat." Reese wandered over to stand by Ilia, then plucked up a tube. "Hey, this one does a super job on bruises."

Kai grinned, wandering down the line, watching as one of the clerks managed to sell Ruby on some eyeshadow that had a little hint of silver dust in it (and then talk her out of actual ruby red lipstick). Nora was being fussed over by at least three employees, apparently her dress and look a big hit, and Nora looked somewhere between overwhelmed and overjoyed as they all worked out an entire skincare regime and rejuvenating soap set and color palette for her.

She noticed Weiss just standing off to the side grinning at Nora, and made her way over. "What, not getting a bit fussed yourself?"

"Having my makeup fussed over by other people isn't exactly a grand memory at the moment," the former heiress admitted with a wry shake of the head. "Besides, I've listened to so many makeup artists chatter that I could do this in my sleep."

Then her ice blue eyes sparkled a bit as she snagged Kai's wrist. "Here, I'll show you."

"Hm? 'Kay." Kai grinned as Weiss pulled her over to one of the other stations and sat her down, the Atlesian woman's eyes skimming over the available and open options before plucking up some eyeshadow.

"At least we don't have to worry about anything clashing with either your hair or your eyes, it'll either clash with both or neither," Weiss said in amusement as she brushed the little pad gently across Kai's eyelids.

"I am truly a creature of convenience."

"Oh is that what you are, not a pain in the butt?" Weiss teased back, eyes sparkling again.

"Yes but I'm a very conveniently located one."

Weiss laughed a little, setting down the pad and selecting some lipstick instead. Her smile faded just a tiny bit, the light in her eyes turning a bit sad as she cupped Kai's chin and lifted it, starting to trace the soft pink color across the redhead's lips. "I suppose you didn't get to wear makeup all that often, hm?"

Kai waited until the lipstick was applied, obviously, then hesitated just a little more before grinning and shrugging a bit. "I did sometimes."

"... You've got that 'I'm not saying something' look on your face now," Weiss said quietly as she turned back to the table.

"Didn't we agree I needed to not casually bring up my traumas?" Kai replied, chuckling just a little.

Weiss slowly sat down the mascara tube she'd picked up. "I'm sorry, this was a bad idea."

"No, no it wasn't, hey." Kai reached over to rest a hand on Weiss's arm. "Please? I'm having a lot of fun, it doesn't bother me, honest."

"... Alright." Weiss smiled again as she turned back, once more lifting Kai's chin to tilt her head. Her fingers were just a little cool, and slender, and confident as they tilted the other woman's head back and forth lightly, applying everything with a deft touch. "You, Kai Sterling, are going to look amazing."

* * *

"She cared so much.

"That was already there by the time I met her. I never got to meet the 'old' Weiss that her team knew in Beacon. By the time I met her she'd already externalized being a gentle, caring soul that was invested in looking after her friends.

"I'd later find out that was actually pretty important to her. Me coming into her life when I did, forming that connection with the new her. The her that didn't have the money, the thrown-together school connection, or the big giant chip on her shoulder. Since getting free of her father, Weiss had lived in a bubble made up of people that she'd known at Beacon.

"Team KACH were her first friends that she made after deciding to make the change and become a new her. The proof that she could make friends as the version of herself she was starting to become proud of.

"As for me... I think we've already established that I didn't have a hope of a chance of a prayer once I met her.

"She did make me look fantastic. Afterward she looked a bit sad again and drew away to go over and discuss the skin care stuff with Reese and Ilia... I thought it was just that worry about reminding me of the bad times, before I came to Remnant, before I got free. Admittedly the only time I ever wore makeup before was when a john had given it to me as a specific request, but as I saw it this and that were completely separate things. Thinking they were related just because of makeup was like thinking going to the movies was related because it involved a shadowy semi-public place.

"Lunch was pleasant, by semi-unanimous decision involving almost everyone ordering a salad. Reese bent so far as to ordering her burger with extra lettuce. The movie was sappy and stupid and I caught Reese sniffling a little during it which was fuckin' adorable. Then we got our hair done, and somehow after clipping off the split ends and giving me a bunch of treatments and brushing and other glorious time-consuming crap those crazy bitches somehow wound up with my hair looking even  _ longer _ than it had when I'd walked in, hanging down my back in a shiny straight fall that everyone made a huge fuss over.

"I hadn't thought the tangles were  _ that _ bad.

"But they did my nails and got me all spruced up and by the end of it my money was down to a whisper of its former self and I looked fucking amazing and more importantly, I felt pretty.

"I felt like a girl.

"Nora, meanwhile, looked like a lady. A regal, modern-day queen, master of her home, lord of all she surveyed. And from the way she talked and smiled, she felt like one too. Confidence had never exactly been her problem, though it had been clear she was still hurting and reeling from Pyrrha. But now she was smiling easily and naturally, and showing off, and laughing. It was a different kind of confidence, a grown-up, in-control kind of confidence.

"She might have done a fair bit of it for Ren, but she'd done it without him. And like I said, I think by the end of the day, she was better for it. It was just a day, but it was a day on her own to see that she could in fact be her own person."

* * *

"We're back!" Ruby called as she pushed the door open.

"Hey, welcome back!" Jaune called as he got up, then stood stunned. "Whoa. You guys look...  _ great _ ," he said, looking as stunned as if someone had thumped him in the center of the forehead with a blackjack.

"You like it?" Nora chirped as she stepped forward from the group, eyes twinkling.

Jaune's jaw literally dropped.

"You..  _ wow _ , you look...  _ Nora _ ?!"

She laughed.

"Are the others back yet?" Blake asked in a cheerful tone.

"No, not yet," Jaune answered distractedly, still looking over everyone... and Kai saw a little flicker of something in them as they passed over her.

'Uh-oh.'

"Um, hey, anyway, now that you guys are back, I think I'm gonna go take a walk before the others do get back, huh?" Jaune suggested, looking just a bit sheepish as he headed for the door. "Been cooped up in the house all day."

"Sure, I'll call your scroll when they get back!" Ruby chirped.

The rest of the group headed off deeper into the house chattering about all the fun they'd had as the door closed behind Jaune. Everyone except Kai. She looked after him, the frosted glass in the door showing the faded light outside, evening starting to well and fully set in. She had a faint idea what might have put him in a mood, and there was every chance her going after him would make it worse.

'But hell, when did that ever stop me?' she thought, pulling her coat back on, grabbing Red Legacy from the closet, and heading after him.

Deciding not to go confronting him right off, she instead fell into step a distance behind him, keeping herself quiet as he walked along. He did just seem to be taking a walk, not too depressed but obviously wanting to clear his mind. Well, that was fine, she just wanted to make sure he'd be alright. He'd come a long way from admitting that he wished he'd died alongside his partner, but still.

He was a team leader in his own right, strong and capable, and a man grown even if others didn't always see it through the awkwardness. But he was one of her friends, her companions, her people.

He'd taken care of her Rainbow and kept her safe.

Kai needed to look after Jaune Arc.

She watched as he ambled along for awhile, stopping and looking over at what seemed to be some sort of park. She saw a little stiffening in his body language, and then he crossed the street, heading for the park as if drawn like a magnet. Frowning curiously, Kai continued to follow him, wondering what had so caught his attention.

The moment she took her eyes off of him and lifted them a bit when entering the park, it became obvious.

Whoever had crafted the statue had obviously known Pyrrha Nikos well, and been deeply affected by her loss. It towered above the idyllic little park grove it had been placed at the center of, her shield clasped low in front of her legs, her head bowed as if in sorrow not just over her own death, but all the others who had lost their lives in the same conflict that had taken hers. There was still something warm and gentle in it, a light that drew the eye that had nothing to do with the gleam of the bronze.

"I wish you'd gotten to know her," Jaune said quietly as he gazed up at the statue, revealing that he'd long since realized Kai was there.

"... I kind of feel like I did." Kai walked up to stand next to him, looking up at the statue as well. Larger than life. Just like the real thing. "All of you talk about her so much. And the videos you showed me, the recordings, the things in articles and books, the..." She grinned a little. "The commercials. She was trying  _ so hard _ to seem like she liked it but you can just tell she wanted to scream something."

"'It's not very good for you'," Jaune supplied, smiling finally as well. "She would have screamed 'It's not very good for you'."

Kai reached out to rub his arm... then gave a soft 'kplch' as a bit of breeze blew some of the errant hair draped forward out of her hood into her face. "Oh da-, nnh, it  _ never _ does this! Must be all the stuff they did to it at that salon..."

"Oh, um." Jaune rummaged in the pocket of his hoodie, then proffered something to her. "Here."

"Thanks." Kai picked up the object, looked at it. It was a very old-fashioned ponytail clasp, a loop of bronze with a slender, spear-shaped fastener running through the bottom. Kai stared at it, then looked up at the matching one on the statue, before looking aside at him. "... Jaune..."

"It's okay. She'd offer it to you herself if she was here," he assured her gently, giving her a smile again.

Nodding, her throat tight, Kai brushed back her hood and gathered her hair up out from beneath her coat, pulling it together and fastening the clasp on. Without a word, she reached over and took Jaune's hand, squeezing it gently as they both looked up at the statue for long moments.

And then they heard a gasp of shock from behind them, and the sound of something falling and scattering on the ground.

Blinking, both turned to find a middle-aged woman with shortish red hair and incredibly vibrant green eyes, which were wide behind her glasses, a hand come up to press to her mouth, a bouquet of flowers scattered on the ground at her feet.

The moment Kai turned around fully, the moment her eyes were visible, the shock started to fade, replaced by a flash of bone-deep sadness and longing for a moment, before it was covered by a smile. "Oh... I'm so sorry, you startled me," she murmured, her eyes drifting up and down Kai's body, pride flashing in her eyes at the sight of a Huntress weapon at the redhead's hip.

'Oh Dragon forgive,' Kai thought, her heart breaking a little.

The woman who was obviously Pyrrha's mother bent and started to gather up some of the flowers, Jaune hurrying to assist her. Pyrrha's mother... Pyrrha's mother thinking her daughter had helped inspire another Huntress. Pyrrha's mother, who had seen a tallish redheaded woman with a long ponytail held by a bronze clasp, standing next to a broad-shouldered blonde man. Pyrrha's mother, who was smiling and thanking Jaune easily, the pain hidden behind practice and pride.

Kai knew she could help this woman. Could help put at least a little of that pain to rest.

She just wasn't sure she'd be able to come back from doing so.

* * *

"I'd always suspected just how far my ability to put on a bit of a fake personality could go, but I'd never had it confirmed until Salem.

"Salem didn't shove herself into my body like some movie spirit, she used what I could already do... she pulled me back and crafted a mental version of herself that she was in control of to pilot my body. And then, utilizing that myself, I'd built versions of her daughters using her memories. I'd been deep down inside of them, not controlling them but part of them.

"And just like I told Salem, that was an ability I was going to use for myself from now on.

"But just like I'd had to fight Salem for control of my own body, even if that had just been a part of the whole, once I stepped back and gave control up to another personality, there was no guarantee I'd get it back. Depending on how strong the will and personality of the thing I made were, it could absolutely fight me for possession of my body, and it might actually win.

"And I knew that the personality I was about to create from the memories everyone else had shared with me, the media I'd consumed, the thoughts I'd had, was going to be very strong.

"But here was a mother in pain in front of me. Even if she hadn't been the mother of one of Remnant's heroes, someone cherished by virtually everyone I loved, she was a mother in pain.

"What the hell else could I possibly have done?"

* * *

Kai closed her eyes. Took a deep breath. And fell back.

It wasn't like before. It was like she drifted backwards and down into something deep and gentle and warm, that buoyed her even as she drifted down and away from herself. What came up was not something deep and vast and terrible, but brushed past her with a gentle step and a soft touch against her, calm and comforting as a warm spring breeze.

Pyrrha Nikos opened Kai's eyes and smiled.

"I'm sorry."


	48. Chapter 35

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pyrrha Nikos returns long enough to say goodbye. Inspired by Pyrrha and urged by Jaune, Kai dares to challenge the impossible on the slim chance of success.

January 11, 244 AGW, 7:44 PM (Remnant 4482)

"I'm sorry." Pyrrha tilted her head just a little, adding with a twinkle in her eye. "That I startled you."

Both Jaune's and the other redhead's heads had snapped up, their eyes widening at the suddenly familiar cadence of the words, the slight accent. They watched as an equally familiar walk and motions of the body carried the other woman forward, saw her crouch down to start helping gather the flowers.

"Oh. Thank you," Pyrrha's mother murmured, obviously a little stunned as the younger redhead gathered the flowers from Jaune's hands and passed them all back to her.

"Of course. Thank you too."

"I'm... sorry, for what?" Pyrrha's mother asked with a blink.

Pyrrha's eyes grew misty, her smile taking on its own sad tinge. "... For everything."

Pyrrha watched with the echo of Kai's acute observation skills as her mother trembled, struggling for a moment to convince herself that what she was seeing and hearing couldn't possibly be true... but then gave in. Accepted it. At least a little. 

Because she needed it.

Slowly, Pyrrha's mother moved between the two younger people and towards the statue, Jaune still staring wide-eyed and stunned as Pyrrha moved to follow after her, both of them standing and looking up at it.

"What... do you think she was thinking?" Pyrrha's mother asked quietly. "... At the end?"

Pyrrha made a show of thinking about it a little despite already knowing the answer, clasping her hands low in front of herself. "... Regrets," she admitted after a moment, though still keeping her voice light, some gentle cheer there amidst the sadness. "Regretting all the things she never got to do. She probably wanted to be a bride. And a mother. ... She probably regretted that she spent so much time being the Invincible Girl, and not enough time just being a girl," she added more softly, looking down at her own clasped hands.

"... I see," Pyrrha's mother whispered, her throat working a little.

"... She regretted leaving the people she loved," Pyrrha continued, looking up at the statue again. "She regretted not telling them she loved them more often. Or sooner," she added, eyes flicking toward Jaune, at the tears now streaming down his face. "She regretted harsh words she said at times. She wished she could take them back."

"... Did she..." Pyrrha's mother swallows hard, dampness sliding softly down her still smooth cheeks. "... Did she resent anyone?"

"... No," Pyrrha said softly, turning her head to look directly at her mother now. "No, not even a little."

The older woman trembled, and then sobbed, throwing the flowers at the statue's feet as she whirled and turned to hug her daughter, Pyrrha smiling as tears streamed down her own cheeks, as she rubbed the other redhead's back. "I'm sorry," she whispered. "I'm sorry I left you, and I'm sorry we never got to say goodbye."

And then, as the weeping tapered off, she turned her head, kissed the other woman's forehead, and said, very softly and with all the love in her heart, "Goodbye."

Pyrrha's mother trembled, hard. Then she slowly drew away, nodding once. She gave her daughter a long, long look, and then whispered, "Goodbye," in return, before she turned and walked away.

Jaune stared after her, and then at Pyrrha as he approached, his hands trembling as he raised them. "... Pyrrha?" he said softly, achingly, the voice of a child begging to know if there's a God.

"... Jaune," Pyrrha replied, her own voice cracking as she threw herself into his arms, pressing her lips to his in an echo of that first kiss, that last kiss, that never should have been a last kiss.

_... Pyrrha... _ Kai whispered from deep down inside, feeling just how tightly Jaune was holding her body.

_ Please. Please just a moment longer with him. Please. _

_... Pyrrha, it's time. I'm sorry. _

_... Yes, you're right. _ As the construct of Pyrrha began to dissolve gently back into the memories inside Kai's head, it added just four more words.  _ Thank you... so much. _

Kai could tell that Jaune knew it when it was her in his arms and not Pyrrha. His grip relaxed a little... and yet the kiss lingered on for one long, eternal second before he broke it, opening his eyes and staring at her.

"I'm sorry," she whispered.

But her voice. Her words this time.

"How did you... do that?" he said, his voice just as soft. 

"It's... something I figured out I could do. A little bit before, but definitely once Salem tried to take my body." She slumped her head against his shoulder, unable to make herself draw away just yet, because his arms were firm and gentle and strong and she felt safe. "A combination of the mind wipe and the slave chip. I can just... make personalities to be and let myself drop back. It's more effective the more I know about someone, and... you guys talk about Pyrrha. A lot." She laughed nervously. "I was afraid I wouldn't be able to come back, honestly."

"... Why?" Jaune murmured. A little hurt. A little lost. But not accusing. And still holding her in his arms.

"Her mom was in so much pain, and I wanted her to have some... closure." She looked up at him again, smiling sadly as her eyes glistened. "To be able to ask the things she didn't get to ask. Say what she didn't get to say. I went away for a little while and let her and Pyrrha have a moment... have a goodbye."

"And... kissing me?" he asked uncertainly, lowering his head a bit, his shaggy blonde bangs brushing against her hair.

She laughed quietly, voice shaking a little. "... That wasn't closure. That was just because she loved you with every bit of her."

"... Oh," he whispered back, in the voice of someone who has had his heart vindicated and broken at the same time.

Kai drew back and away from him, suddenly feeling too raw and too open, turning her back and hauling her hood up, pulling it forward until she could no longer see the statue out of the corner of her eye.

Jaune Arc and Pyrrha Nikos...

... two people she just wasn't worthy of.

"Kai? What's wrong?" Jaune asked gently, even through his own pain, stepping forward and reaching a hand towards her shoulder.

"Nothing," she replied quickly, wincing as her voice came out in a shuddery near-croak.

The hand came to rest on her back instead. "Please tell me."

She was silent for a moment, then let out a soft, sad laugh. "Just... her love for you... bright as the sun and just as warm... it felt really good," she admitted, drawing in a hard breath, then letting it out a bit more shakily. "I guess I'm left wishing I could feel like that."

"Why can't you?" he asked earnestly, sounding honestly confused.

She let herself look back at him, forced to reveal the tears running down her face, trails of damp framing her wan smile. "Because who the hell would ever feel that way back about someone like me?"

"... Oh Kai," he murmured in a heartbroken tone, though this time she realized it was for her and not for himself. He stepped forward, wrapping his arms around her shoulders in a brotherly embrace, hugging her back against him and bowing his head over hers. "... You're such a dumbass."

She couldn't help but let out a startled bark of a laugh at that, even as she continued to cry, one of her hands coming up to rest on his arms. "What?!"

"I have no clue who you see yourself as... but the you that you see in the mirror is clearly not the you that the rest of us see every day."

"I dunno what you see either, but I'm not the sort of person people fall in love with..." she murmured, letting her chin rest against her hand on his arms. "Crushes. Infatuation. Lust. Yeah sure. People 'love' my hair or my boobs or my ass. Hey, they're all nice," she tried to quip, but it came out so empty that she just sighed and closed her eyes. "And I believe all of you love me. I do. Like family. Like friends. I love you that way too. But the..." 

She swallowed. "The devouring fire of love, the deep, burning intensity that consumes every part of you until... until it touches a part of you that you didn't know you had," you murmur, recalling Yang's words to Blake. "... That isn't for people like me. People who have done what I've done."

"That's for everyone, Kai," Jaune replied instantly, voice quiet but insistent, arms squeezing around her. "Everyone deserves that. You deserve that. If you do think I love you like family... and I do... then listen to me. Believe me. You deserve to fall in love as much as anyone."

She let out a shuddery breath, a few more tears escaping, her eyes staying closed. "... You don't regret it, then?" she found herself asking in barely a whisper.

"... No." Jaune raised his head, eyes once more resting on the statue, his face calm and resolved now. "Not even a little."

Then he moved his arms to rest his hands on her shoulders, turning her to face him. "Kai. If you want to fall in love... let yourself fall in love. Let yourself feel that fire down to a part of you that you didn't know was there. Let yourself believe in what it could mean to feel that way about someone. Let yourself believe you're worth it to love and be loved back... because that's a hope greater than anything we've had so far on this mission."

* * *

"Since I got free, a lot of people had told me that I was worthwhile in various ways. Niobe telling me how much she needed me, how helpful I was to her. Ozma telling me I was 'of the highest quality'. Reese telling me I was gorgeous with a look in her eyes that said she didn't just mean my body.

"Somehow I was never ready to believe it until I heard it from Jaune Arc.

"Jaune had spent so long thinking he was worthless and no account too. That he'd never escape his past, that it would taint the rest of his life. And after he lost Pyrrha, I think he'd just started to accept that he was meant to spend the rest of his life hurting and alone.

"Pyrrha hadn't meant the kiss to be closure, but I think it had been for him. Jaune had been able to finally realize how much she'd really cared... but that it was like I'd told her. It was time. He was ready to turn the page and look forward to the next chapter of his life.

"And he wasn't going to let me get left behind.

"If Jaune could finally start looking forward and really believing in himself, what excuse did I have? Sure, my past was full of a lot more darkness, but I'd at least been taught to deal with that. He'd just had to flounder his way through as best he could... but he'd managed.

"If he was going to, damn if I wasn't going to step up beside him and start looking at a rest of my life too. If he was going to be brave enough to look all that pain in the eye and say he was done letting it control his life... I was damn well going to be strong enough to ask for a date."

* * *

"... If I'm finally honest with myself," Kai said slowly. "I... think I'm already in love with someone. I just never thought..."

"That someone that great could ever be in love with you back?" 

At her tiny nod, Jaune gently tucked his fingers under her chin and tilted it back up. "I know, Kai. I was in love with the greatest woman in the world and I didn't let myself see it because I didn't think she could ever love someone like me. ... My stupid mistake cost us so much time together." His thumb brushed over her chin before he stepped back. "Don't make the same mistake I did, okay?"

She watched as he turned and left... still seeming lonely, but stronger now. A little more at peace than he had been before. She swallowed against the tightness in her throat, hoping he really did find love again someday, hoping that he didn't have to be strong alone forever.

Hoping he could find someone that would love him like Pyrrha did. As bright as the sun and just as warm.

And she thought about what he said. About lost time.

About the dangers that lay ahead of them, that could take any of their lives at any time.

About Pyrrha. Challenging the impossible, in the slim chance of succeeding.

She thought of wondrous elegance of grace and beauty, gentility and delicacy, wrapped around a depth of warmth and kindness that shone like the sun on a field of pristine snow.

All of those things that have been completely absent from her life up to this point, but which from the moment she'd seen them enchanted her as deeply as she'd ever been touched by anything else before. A thing as foreign to her as Remnant, but which had been just as welcoming... 

But was just as much a place that a scruffy punk from the streets of a decrepit city-world didn't belong.

Her thumb hovered over the screen of her scroll, not daring to touch the contact it rested above. This was stupid. This was ridiculous. She was a nobody. She was a foul-mouthed, came-from-nowhere, no-account nobody. Might as well try to touch the sun.

Kai hesitated, glanced aside. Looked up at the statue.

... Might as well challenge the impossible in the slim chance of succeeding.

She took a deep breath, tapped the contact, and brought the scroll to her ear.

"Hey, Weiss?"


	49. Chapter 36

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kai challenges the impossible... a date with Weiss Schnee. Can a no-past, no-account, nobody from a decrepit city world possibly have anything to offer to the epitome of elegance and grace?

January 11, 244 AGW, 8:01 PM (Remnant 4482)

" _ Kai? Where are you, we were starting to get a little worried. Yang, Ren, and Grey are back, Grey's injecting everyone with those psycomm things now. _ "

"Sorry, I just slipped out for a walk. Um... hey, listen, I need to... talk to you about something," Kai said, fighting not to fidget. "While I was out walking around, I saw this cafe at the corner of Ackles and Paris. Could you meet me there in about an hour?"

There was a noticeable pause, before Weiss replied, " _ Alright, sure. I'll be there. _ "

"Okay. See you then." Kai tapped the disconnect button, then just stared at the scroll for a moment. "This is hopeless," she muttered. 

But she was doing it anyway.

"Thanks for the inspiration  _ there _ ," she scoffed slightly, glancing at the statue. Then taking a deep breath and hurrying off, already tapping another contact and putting the scroll back to her ear.

She only had an hour, and not that much money left.

Weiss Schnee walked down the sidewalk, garbed in her Dust-infused dress just in case. Kai had sounded a little odd on the scroll, and she couldn't quite get her old 'captive situation' training out of her head. But as she approached the corner that she'd been given as the address, she found an entirely different sort of unexpected sight waiting for her.

Kai was wearing a suit. It was obviously secondhand and didn't  _ quite _ fit her (though it looked like some quick attempts at taking it in here and there had been made). The suit itself was basic black, but it looked like she'd managed to find a slightly silvery-grey vest to go with it as well as a matching tie, which would have been gauche as hell in Atlas but which Weiss actually thought looked a bit enchanting. The button-up formal shirt looked new, though, and her hair was done in a low ponytail that made her look rather handsome.

"Oh, you look... nice," Weiss said with a smile as she approached, honestly surprised at the look... then frowned a little as Kai winced. 'Did she think I was being condescending?'

"Ah, thanks. It's just something I threw together, y'know," Kai answered sheepishly. 

"Well I think it looks good. The pulled-back hair, too," Weiss added, unthinkingly reaching up to tuck a few stray strands of hair behind the taller woman's ear... then blinking as a bit of light flashed on bronze. "... Is that...?"

"Um, yeah. My hair was being unruly and Jaune loaned it to me, I'll give it back when we get to the house," Kai answered sheepishly, ducking her head.

"It looks good on you too," Weiss said softly, smiling. "I think you should ask Jaune if you can keep it."

Kai clearly didn't know what to say to that, opening her mouth slightly, then closing it. Then she cleared her throat. "So, um, like I said, I sort of wanted to talk to you, so maybe we could go inside and have a bite to eat?"

"Sure." Weiss's smile grew a bit. It sounded like fun.

Even though a part of her warned her, told her there was something wrong with this, this was bad, this wasn't something she should be doing, she needed to back off before she did something shameful.

But she'd had a wonderful day with her friends. A real girl's day out.

She decided she wasn't listening to that part of her tonight.

'Stupid, stupid, should have called ahead, that's a thing people do,' Kai thought with a truly crushing amount of despair as the two of them sat in the entryway on chairs for about ten minutes, Weiss's eyes scanning the slightly kitschy decorations around her with what might almost be fascination but which Kai's brain assured her was disdain. 

Eventually they were shown into the dining room, which was way, way nicer than anywhere Kai had ever actually eaten before, because there were actual cloth tabletops and candles on the table and there was music playing that didn't have lyrics or drum solos. 

'Oh Dragon please I beg of you have mercy don't let there be more than one fork,' she thought, eyeing the rolled-up napkin to the side of the small empty plate sitting in the center. 'What is that for? Do they serve nuts here like a bar? I don't see any. Was I supposed to bring nuts oh fuck I bet I was supposed to bring nuts.'

As the two of them sat, with Kai somewhat nervously assuring the waiter she'd be alright with water for now (was that okay? was it okay to just drink water in a place like this? she probably looked super cheap), she tried to glance around at the other tables without being too obvious about it. Could they show her what to do? Okay it looked like it was okay to drink water. 

Oh Dragon there were two forks what have they done to you why are they oh they looked like the same fork she guessed one was a spare.

_ Kai? _

Kai almost jumped out of her skin at the sound of Weiss's voice in her head, the motion enough to make her chair give a little thump and draw glances from several of the other tables. Her face almost as red as her hair, she sent back,  _ Y-yeah? _

_ Are you okay? _ Though Weiss's expression was concerned, her eyes were twinkling a little. It obviously amused her a bit to get that kind of reaction out of the one who was usually all about getting them out of her.

_ Yeah, yeah, I'm just... so, ah, looks like Grey managed to get the psycomms injected, huh? _

_ Yes. _ Weiss's left hand drifted up towards her neck briefly, before settling back atop her other on the tabletop as she smiled at Kai, tilting her head a bit.  _ It's taking a bit of getting used to, but it's also... kind of nice! Like this we can talk without disturbing the ambiance, _ she added, grinning a bit and giving a half-shrug gesture with one arm to the cafe.

_ Right. The ambiance, _ Kai thought, unable to help keep a bit of misery from leaking into the mental projection as she let her eyes trail downward.

Weiss was silent for a bit. But finally she reached over, resting a small, cool hand atop one of Kai's.  _ Kai, what's wrong? _ she sent, mental voice gentle and concerned, pretty eyes pinching a little, faintly crinkling the scar running across one.  _ You asked me here to talk but you're not talking and you seem... skittish, almost. This isn't like you. Please tell me what's bothering you. _

Kai resisted the urge to turn her hand over, brush her thumb over those perfect fingers, though she found yourself looking at Weiss's hand, those perfectly-manicured nails... which had looked that way long before they got to the salon. Perhaps once the product of someone else's labor, Weiss had been doing it herself for some time in the wake of her departure from home, and had refused to let herself settle for anything less than perfection with it.

'How the hell is she supposed to settle for me?'

_ I'm sorry, Weiss, _ Kai sent back miserably.  _ I think this might be the best I can do. _

_ The... best you can do? _ Weiss blinked.  _... I don't understand. _

_ The secondhand suit. Thirdhand for all I know. The walk-in corner cafe. Water on the table and music from speakers. Even after all of this is over, I don't see myself being able to give you any more than that. _

"... Kai..." Weiss whispered aloud, her eyes going wide.

"Just nevermind," Kai murmured, looking away, trying not to cry. "I shouldn't have bothered you with this in the first place."

Weiss looked shocked for a moment... then her eyes narrowed and she switched back to the psycomms, perhaps wanting to make sure her voice was clear in the other woman's head.  _ Kai Sterling! If you try to say you shouldn't have  _ **_bothered_ ** _ to tell me you're in love with me, I'm going to get  _ **_very angry_ ** _! _

Kai winced and ducked her head a little, then sheepishly raised her eyes to Weiss's.  _ Just... like I said. At the end of the day... this is probably all I'll ever be able to give you. Me, and... _ She let her eyes flit around to the little corner cafe.  _ This. _

_ You should know better than to think I'd demand more from you than that, _ Weiss countered, even her mental voice a bit frosty as she started to slip her hand away.

Kai couldn't help it. She caught that small, cool hand in both of hers, wrapping them around it as they locked eyes.

_ Weiss. It isn't about what you demand. It's about what you deserve. _

Weiss's eyes widened a little as Kai continued, but the red-eyed woman lowered her head, unable to look across the table anymore.  _ It's not about giving you what you had. I'd want to give you so much better than I can ever provide even if I'd never known you came from money. You're... a bright, glittering snow star, rising against the wind and shining through the night, every movement and every motion a wonder. You're like the way snowfall looks the first time you see it without knowing what it is, a blanket of gleaming white that's soft and warm and inviting. Just that... unlike the snowfall, you really are. I watch you care for everyone else, the consideration you show them, and I know it probably comes from a place of guilt about how you used to look at the world, but I can see the sincerity in it, the way it comes easily to you at the end of the day. I... I had to have someone else yank me out of my bad situation by the hair, practically, you walked out of yours with your head high and back straight. Everything about you... body, mind, and soul... is beautiful, and you deserve to be surrounded by the most beautiful things not just Remnant, but the multiverse, has to offer you. You just- _

She raised her head, her thoughts choked off to see the tears running down Weiss's cheeks, tracing those perfect slender lines and dripping down from that artistic point of a chin.

_ If you think, _ Weiss sent back, even her mental voice shaking.  _ If  _ **_you think_ ** _ there is anything on this planet, or in your whole stupid multiverse, more beautiful than what you've just said to me Kai Sterling then you'd damn well better already know what it is and be able to show it to me, or you're a bigger idiot than has ever set foot on this stupid mudball. _

"Weiss," Kai whispered aloud, eyes wide.

For just a moment there was no elegance or grace as Weiss rose so fast she knocked her chair over with a clatter, the silverware and empty plates rattling as she brushed the table. But it was there, reflexive and ingrained and everything that had enchanted Kai as her hands grabbed the redhead's cheeks and tilted her head up up, and those soft, faintly cool, glistening lips of hers came down half-desperately. 

Practically every eye in the restaurant was on them, but the notoriously crowd-conscious Weiss either didn't notice or didn't care, her eyes closed and her whole slender body leaned in, Kai's hands having come up to her wrists, thumbs pressing into the indents of her palms, feeling her pulse, feeling her whole self as they kissed.

Weiss drew back, opened her eyes, stared into Kai's face. "If there is a single thing in this world more beautiful than how you make me feel and how you feel about me, I don't care about it. It can go to hell."

Kai stared at her for a moment. And then drew her in, tilted her back, and covered her lips with her own, holding that lithe, perfect body dipped in her arms as she kissed her for all she was worth.

Admittedly it was pretty great when the whole restaurant burst into applause.

Of course, after that Weiss had gotten embarrassed, standing red-faced and muttering meek little apologies as waiters and waitresses righted the chair and fixed the table settings.

From the grins on their faces, they found it almost as cute as Kai did.

After that, Weiss settled back into her chair, every so often ducking her head in embarrassment, but otherwise keeping her eyes on the other woman's. Despite the supposed need to talk, they were quiet through the rest of the meal, not feeling anything more needed to be said. Not until they were walking down the sidewalk together, and Weiss's hand slipped into Kai's and squeezed it.

"I love you," she whispered.

"I love you too," Kai replied. For the first time she understood what people meant when they said their hearts felt so full they might burst. She tugged Weiss's hand, urging her to a stop and to turn, so she could clasp both the other woman's hands and gaze down at her with a smile. 'Heh, she's so short,' Kai thought adoringly as she saw Weiss peek bashfully at her through her bangs.

"Um, Kai," Weiss murmured, eyes flicking downward. "Do you think we could... wait a little while, before..." She trailed off, shifting her shoulders.

"Telling everyone? Sure," Kai answered easily. "If that's what you want."

"What?" Weiss blinked, looked up. "No! That's not what I meant at all!" She actually smirked a bit as she added. "If I didn't want to see her face, I would have already told Ruby using these silly psycomms."

The smile faded to a ghost of itself as she looked down again. "No, I mean before we're... intimate." Weiss took a deep breath, making herself look up at her... her  _ girlfriend _ ... before she continued. "... Just... I used to be really in denial about liking girls, and for a long time I felt... bad or ashamed thinking about those things. I... kind of hated myself," she admitted, releasing one of Kai's hands to rub her upper arm. "And I've been trying to work on it as part of accepting who I am, but it's... hard."

'Dragon forgive,  _ that's _ why she was looking like that?' Kai's heart went from overflowing to aching just a little, bringing her freed hand up to cup Weiss's cheek, brushing her thumb over it. "Oh honey. Oh my beautiful, darling, perfect Snowbird. Of course we can," she assured her, even as Weiss blushed brightly at the pet names and praise, ducking her head again. "We can take all the time you need, don't worry."

Then she tilted Weiss's face up, looking at the once more tear-streaked cheeks... and smiling impishly. "Hard as it is to restrain myself."

Weiss let out a short laugh, and smacked Kai's shoulder. "It's not entirely easy for me either, you know!" Then she ducked her head bashfully again. "... I like your butt."

"Yeah?" Kai murmured, grinning and leaning down to brush her forehead against Weiss's a bit, then drawing her in close.

"Yes. I do." Weiss smiled, leaning up and draping her arms around Kai's shoulders. "I like who it's attached to a lot more, though," she added in a whisper before kissing the redhead again.

The two walked back into the house hand-in-hand. Ruby was the first to give an audible 'Huh?', the others quickly looking over and noticing, smiles growing as Kai and Weiss both bashfully glanced away from each other, but didn't release their hands.

"Awwwwwwwww that's shoooooooo shweeeeeeeeeeet!" Nora declared, clutching her hands to one side of her cheek and making kissy-faces. "Everybody's falling in love! It's a total love season!" She instantly leaped upward, raising her lower body, Ren reflexively catching her in his arms as she threw her own arms around his neck. "Ren! Babies! Now!" she demanded, eyes wide and sparkling.

Ren staggered just a little, slothful face going red as he murmured, "Not  _ right  _ now..."

The crowd pressed in, offering congratulations, pats on the arm, Weiss eventually going off with Ruby pestering her for every single detail of the date. Kai smiled to watch her go, then looked as Ilia approached. "Thanks for coming and getting my stuff, Rainbow," the redhead murmured gratefully.

"I'm glad it worked out for you, Kai." Ilia's smile seemed just a little wan, a little sad. Kai hated having any part in putting that expression on her sister's face, but it seemed like that was the way things had to be. But that faint blue tinge to the younger woman's specks was painful to see. She wasn't sure what to do about it, and before she could think Ilia obviously made the effort to push it off her skin, grinning wryly instead. "But, c'mon, really... a  _ Schnee _ ?"

Kai took a deep breath, feeling her eyes pinch. "Rainbow... is this okay with you?"

Ilia hesitated.

* * *

"I'm not sure what I'd have done if she'd said 'no'.

"I was in love with Weiss... down to a part of me I didn't know I had. But Ilia was my sister. Blood no longer mattered, Ilia was just as much my sister as Ruby was Yang's. I'd have thrown myself into Hell to get her back, and I'd have stayed there without a second thought to push her back out. That was, to my mind, the very least expected of a sister. If she'd told me she just couldn't accept me being with someone from the family that had been responsible for her parents' deaths, I...

"... I might have actually had to tell Weiss it couldn't happen after all.

"Which is why it was probably unfair to even ask Ilia. She loved me. She wouldn't do that to me, even if she had felt that way. She would have said yes even if it wasn't okay with her.

"Not that it mattered. My little sister was the absolute best. My Rainbow wasn't that angry, hateful little girl I'd met that night in the bunker anymore. She was a strong, thoughtful, caring woman... and I could have always counted on her heart."

* * *

"Yeah," Ilia said, nodding. "Yeah, I really am happy for you. And for her," she continued. "... You taught me that it's more important to see individuals than groups. Including Schnees. And Weiss is a good person... she's my friend. She's worthy of your love... you're worthy of hers too," Ilia added in a softer, more imploring voice, staring up at Kai as if knowing that was the part she still hadn't quite accepted.

The best little sister in the multiverse.

"Thanks, Rainbow," Kai whispered, leaning down to bump their foreheads lightly. "I'll work on trying to believe it."

Later, having changed back into her usual clothes that she realized she'd started thinking of as her Huntress gear, Kai sat smoking on a bench a bit down the street from the house. She'd been tempted to sit on the steps and do it, but that seemed rude in such a nice neighborhood. Not that she'd have cared before, but, well... she was dating Weiss Schnee now.

Even if Weiss said she didn't care, Kai could try to be a  _ little _ more refined for her sake.

As Jaune ambled up and sat down next to her, she almost without thinking reached down and snubbed her cig out on one of the boards of the bench. '... Oops. Sorry Argus. Still working on it.'

"Hey. Congratulations," he said with a smile.

"Couldn't have done it without you," she assured him with a smile. Then she gave a soft 'oh', sitting up and reaching into her pocket. "Oh, hey, here," she added, holding out the bronze clasp.

"No," Jaune said immediately, reaching out to curl her fingers over it with both of his hands. "You keep it."

"You sure? I didn't-"

"I'm sure. Pyrrha would want you to have it. And I think it's nice that all three of our teams have things of hers to remember her by. It helps me feel more than ever that she's still with us on this." He looked away sheepishly, rubbing the back of his neck. "Y'know I used to have the biggest crush on Weiss. I guess... probably because I knew she'd never return it. I mean, I didn't know she was, y'know, just that she wasn't interested in me at all. That way it was safe... I could pursue her all I wanted and I knew she'd never like me back. ... I guess I was probably hurting her, though," he added with heavy regret, glancing down.

"Hey." Kai frowned gently, reaching out to rest a hand on his thigh. "Jaune, you didn't know."

"I know. It's still a little hurtful thinking I made things worse for her though, even a little. Even though I know she forgives me. Because you know what Weiss did tonight?" He smiles at her again. "She hugged me and said, 'she saved me, Jaune'."

"... What?" Kai whispered, her eyes widening.

"Weiss was still hurting... she thought the only reason the rest of us accepted her was because we'd known her so long, like we just had to because of all we'd been through together, and no matter how she tried she wouldn't ever be able to prove herself to anybody but Team RWBY and Team JNPR. Apparently you said some pretty awesome stuff though... you showed her someone who met her as she is now could love her. Fall in love with her. ... You saved her."

Jaune's eyes lowered a bit to Kai's hand holding the ponytail clasp. "Like Pyrrha saved me."

Kai could feel her eyes getting wet, a tightness in her throat again, her smile a little shaky as she reached up to redo her ponytail tie. "I couldn't have done it without Pyrrha either."

"She'd be really proud to hear that," Jaune said in a whisper.

* * *

"Unfortunately, as great as my confession to Weiss went, it would be the last thing that actually went right for awhile. In fact things were about to veer way, way, way off course."


	50. Interlude 14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What happened when Ren, Yang, and Grey returned to the house.

Grey, Ren, and Yang rocked a little bit as they finished stepping out of the portal and back into the living room of the Argus house. "We're home!" Grey immediately called. People came rushing in... and he blinked at the sight of a lot of practically glowing, elegantly-coiffed faces ringing him. "Well goddamn."

"Hey, welcome back!" Ruby chirped, looking not entirely unlike a small but very popular photo model despite still being in her Huntress garb.

" _ Wow _ , sis, you look great," Yang said enthusiastically, grinning. "Must've been a great girl's day out. ... Damn," she added, her purple eyes going wide.

"Why thank you," Blake said warmly, showing off her own makeup job, as well as her hair having been washed and brushed, turning it into a long, gleaming midnight wave.

"You look gorgeous." Not bothering with the fact that they hadn't officially told the others, Yang stepped forward and draped her arms around her lover's shoulders, leaning in for a kiss.

Blake's cheeks colored, but she simply kissed back, trying to ignore Ruby giggling happily nearby. "Thank you," she whispered, before giving Yang another quick kiss.

"Ren!" Nora called happily as she stepped forward.

Ren turned towards her, and his eyes widened, jaw going just a little slack. "Nora... Nora, you look..."

She looked like she'd stepped out of another world than theirs entirely. She looked so mature, so... ladylike. It was both unlike herself, and yet it was so her that it was almost insane. There was not a single part of the dress that he would have pictured on her before, and yet on her it looked natural and perfect. It was...

"... breathtaking," Ren completed in an awed whisper.

A blush started below Nora's neckline and went all the way to her scalp. Then she stepped forward and hugged him tightly, albeit without any attempt to crush his ribcage, which he appreciated. Then she sniffed, and looked up at him curiously. "Have you been swimming?"

He smiled just a little, slightly sheepishly. "Yes. Sort of."

"I can't wait to tell you about my day," they both said almost simultaneously.

Then they blinked.

It slowly sank in that neither of them had ever gotten to tell the other about their day before. They had always shared the day, they'd both been there for it, recounting it to each other would have been pointless. And yet now they got to tell each other about all the amazing things that they'd seen and done and the fun they had while they were apart.

Slowly, Nora smiled... to go with her dress, it was a more mature, ladylike smile than any Ren had ever seen before. "I love you," she whispered, bringing a hand up to touch his cheek.

"And I you," he answered, raising his hand to cover hers. "Please marry me," he added in a whisper.

"Okay." Turquoise eyes twinkled. "As long as we start spending more time apart."

"Deal."


	51. Interlude 15

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Weiss writes her sister a letter the night after her first date, expressing what might be too difficult to say face-to-face.

Dear Winter,

I hope you'll forgive me if this letter is a little less formal than the usual. I know you don't like it when I'm "sloppy" but this just isn't the sort of issue that you can be formal about. Some things need to be said straightforward, I think.

There's every chance, in fact every hope, that I'll be seeing you in person before you receive this letter. Know that I'm looking forward to it and I hope you'll forgive me because I have every intention of giving you a great big hug. But there are some things I have to tell you that are a little easier to get out in writing.

First of all, I would like to tell you that I understand so much better how hard it must have been for you to finally walk away. To make the clean break. Even after I escaped father's house arrest, I found myself occasionally missing the money. The lifestyle. The ease. I was a bit ashamed of that.

There are some other shames I've been living with too. Things that I shouldn't have to be ashamed of. Things I'm not going to be ashamed of anymore.

Winter, I'm gay.

I've known for years but have kept myself in denial. I pushed myself to look towards men I thought were the sort I was supposed to like, and in my heart I knew it was a lie. But I just felt so bad about myself every time I caught myself looking at another girl, thinking about another girl. I knew that was the sort of thing father would never tolerate... Weiss Schnee is supposed to be the perfect lady, not date the perfect lady.

Actually thinking about it, I suppose his scorn was only one option. I'm not sure what I'd have done if he decided to commoditize it instead. Try to mold me into a trendy "Lesbian Coded" singer and market the hell out of me. I guess there might actually be worse things than outright rejection.

I've felt bad about myself and what I knew I was for so long that I'd begun to forget that there was any other way to feel. More, I worried that the only reason my friends from Beacon still cared about me was because they had to. Because they met me back then and our experiences and shared losses had simply bound us together, but no one who had met the me I'd become could ever truly care about me. Let alone fall in love with me.

And then I met Kai Sterling.

She wasn't even "Sterling" when we met. Just Kai. A strange girl from a far-off place. She was boorish, and uncouth, she swore like it was nothing and she smoked and she was as blunt as a spoon. She read people like a book to find out what she needed to do and she, as she put it, kicked them in the ass for their own benefit. She was rude and loud and a little obnoxious, if I'm honest.

And she was so kind. And she was so hurting.

She had never been given a toy before. Not in her entire life. Even more than us, she never got to be a child, to do child things. And then Ruby... the sweet little dolt... just bought her a toy for Solstice. Kai was so flabbergasted, and then she smiled at this silly little action figure in her hand.

I didn't have a chance.

She reads people like books. She watches their faces and their bodies and it's like it lets her look into their souls. And she did that to me. And she fell in love with me.

She told me she wanted to give me all the very best things in the world. Not because it was what I once had, but because she thought I deserved them. She called me a bright, glittering snow star, rising against the wind and shining through the night. She told me I was caring, and considerate, and strong. She said I was beautiful... not just my body, she said my mind and my soul were beautiful.

She made me feel beautiful.

She made me feel beautiful things.

I can't remember the last time I truly felt good about myself. But when she tells me things like this, with that look in her eyes, I do. I feel beautiful, truly and sincerely, for the first time ever. I thought I should give up on love... that everything that had happened, I should content myself with friendship, with just getting by on the kindness of my teammates. But she changed that.

She saved me, Winter.

I've only known her a few weeks, but I can't see the rest of my life without her. I don't know what course is set for us... all the hardships and challenges that are to come... I don't even know if we're going to survive this whole mess.

Winter. If something ever happens to me, I want you to know I love you very much. I want you to know I understand what you've tried to do for me, and that I appreciate it. And I want to ask you, please take care of Kai if she makes it through and I don't. Please be the family for her she needs and deserves. Be strong for her... and let her be strong for you. Lean on each other. And tell her she should fall in love again someday. Because she deserves to.

If you see her, please give my love to Mom. I hope she's alright. We both know how she is, but I guess there's always hope. I feel like there is now anyway.

With all the love in my heart, your sister,   
  


Weiss Schnee

P.S.

If something does happen to me, please tell Whitley that I love him, and that I forgive him.

But only if I die, please.


	52. Chapter 37

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Kai and Grey display that the deadliest martial art is being able to read case law, and Kai then tempts fate far too hard. Faced with potential deadly danger to Ruby, Kai, Ilia, and the rest of Team RWBY make a hard choice that will send them on a very long detour.
> 
> The final chapter of the "Epic of Remnant" opening arc of Kai's Story. The story will continue in "Notorious".

January 12, 244 AGW, 9:37 AM (Remnant 4482)

"I am afraid that the border is closed and that is final." 

The diminutive commander of the Atlas military base stood at the gate, exuding a sort of chilly politeness. "However, if you wish to file for an entry visa exception, I will have any forms you request printed and delivered to an address of your choosing. Waiting time for a response is currently at around two weeks." She pursed her lips as she added, "The response is usually 'no'."

"But we've got the lost heiress of the Schnee Dust Company here," Qrow grunted, gesturing aside at Weiss, who winced a bit. "What, she's not allowed to go home?"

"If Miss Schnee has finally decided to return to her proper place, I will of course facilitate  _ her _ return to Atlas," Cordovin answered firmly, giving Weiss what looked like an attempt at an ingratiating grin.

_ Thanks a fuckin' lot, Dad, _ Kai sent at him as she stepped up and rubbed Weiss's shoulder a bit, the scruffy man wincing a little. Kai wasn't sure if it was at the mental communication or at being called out on using Weiss as bait.

"Now, if you don't mind, I do have work to do, so you can inform the gate guards of any forms you require. They have the local file address for the list of them," Cordovin announced, turning to leave.

Kai stepped forward to the gate, hands in her pockets. "Number 512998-A."

Cordovin stopped.

"I beg your pardon?" she said huffily, turning slightly and glancing over her shoulder.

"Atlesian Higher Court case 512998, AKA 'Shyamala versus Atlas', majority opinion A," Kai replied, folding her arms over her chest as the others started slowly turning their heads towards her in a 'what' look. (Except Grey, he'd turned his head and was laughing into his coat collar.) 

"The head judge Dugal Zernebog clarified in his writing that their finding in favor of Shyamala on Eighth Decree grounds, and I quote, 'indicates that any Atlesian citizen in good standing attempting to return to Atlas is entitled to bring with them those close family and associates as deemed reasonable by numbers and current legal standing, meaning they are not now nor have ever been convicted of severe or high crimes. The court finds that the citizens of Atlas should not, at any time, have to choose between their citizenship or their family.'"

Cordovin scowled now, turning back to face the redhead. "Yes, well, none of you except her are Schnees, so-"

"Grey, you wanna take this one?" Kai prompted, glancing over.

"Delighted." His cat ears twitched, and he didn't bother to hide his smirk. "Atlesian Higher Court case 1002991, AKA 'Radley versus Atlas', AKA 'Shyamala versus Atlas round two' in the papers, majority opinion B. 'It is the suggestion of the court, in light of the lack of any legislative firmity, that the interpretation of friends and acquaintances is to include ties of blood and marriage out to first cousins, or up to four individuals of the citizen's choosing and four individuals of their choosing, so long as they have some relationship as recognized under Atlesian law, and they do not have any open criminal cases or warrants against them in any kingdom.' Radley versus Atlas was seventeen years ago, that means it beats the requirement for entry into common law without contradictory legislation passing by two years."

"Are you saying I can pick four people and those people can pick four people?" Weiss murmured in shock, before jerking upright as Cordovin looked at her. "I mean, of course! It's Atlesian law! Everybody knows this! I was planning on invoking... that... when I got here!"

"And can you prove," Cordovin said icily. "You have recognizable relationships to these people?"

"Ooo! Ooo! Me me me!" Ruby raced forward, thrusting an arm up and hopping up and down. "I'm Weiss's partner! Huntress partner! At school! We were registered at Beacon! We're her team! It could be any of us!" she added, gesturing back to Yang and Blake.

"... Fine, acceptable." Cordovin huffed. "But the rest-"

"Qrow Branwen, licensed Huntsman," Qrow declared in his rasp, stepping forward to show said license... then flipping it to another. "Also licensed combat teacher. I'm Miss Schnee's personal tutor. These are also my students," he added, gesturing at Team JNPR and Oscar.

"... Nnnh," the old commander growled, before looking at Kai. "And what about-"

"Her name's Kai Sterling," Weiss said before the redhead could speak, stepping a bit closer to her and visibly lacing her fingers through the other woman's, smiling up at her. "... She's my significant other."

"... Right," Kai whispered hoarsely, smiling back at her, before clearing her throat and looking back at Cordovin. "And these people are my Huntress team, you'll find us registered out of Haven as Team KACH. ... Also my, ah, my own combat instructor isn't here, but she'll be coming with us."

"... Very well," Cordovin said after a moment, sighing heavily. "Give me a few moments to check with the JAG office, but if all this checks out I suppose I can arrange some sort of transport for you to Atlas. You'll still have to fill out the proper forms!" she added with the shake of a finger, before turning and stomping off.

"What. The. Hell?" Yang said once she was gone, looking back and forth between Kai and Grey.

Grey snorted. "You guys wouldn't last a day in the Guild."

"Fighting skills, perception, quick wits, and a high level in legalese," Kai chipped with a grin, possibly a rather dopey grin as she squeezed Weiss's hand. "All survival traits for taking Guild contracts."

"Kai and I looked up the legal BS about entering Atlas as soon as we got to Argus."

"We're really going to Atlas!" Ruby squeals happily.

"I mean, as long as no one's got an active warrant out for their arrest, apparently," Kai snorted.

Kai crashed onto her back in the cell, already scrambling up as the door slammed. "This is  _ bullshit _ !"

"Tell it to the judge," the tall soldier in his also stupidly tall hat sneered at her before turning and marching off.

Kai slammed a palm against the door, snarling, then shook her hand. "Ow," she muttered.

They'd been separated from the others, clumped into groups of six or less based on wherever they'd been standing when they were surrounded by soldiers. Kai and Ilia had wound up being thrown into a cell with Team RWBY, which looked like it might be in an entirely different wing than the others had been taken to. Everyone had their gear and weapons taken, right down to confiscating coats and Ruby's cape.

Kai glowered very hard at the heavy, secure-looking locker that now held her ring and Pyrrha's ponytail clasp.

"How the heck are we  _ all _ flagged in the system as wanted criminals?!" Yang demanded. 

'At least they let her keep the arm, guess the new one's weapon emplacement isn't obvious,' Kai thought morosely, striking a slightly too familiar pose of draping her arms through the bars and leaning on the door.

"Someone obviously wanted us out of the game," Weiss grumbled, stalking back and forth slightly, since there wasn't room in the cell with everyone for full-on pacing. "My father... ... no, he'd never remember the names of my friends," she concluded flatly. "It can't be him."

"Someone in Mistral that decided they didn't like working with the Faunus, decided to take it out on us?" Blake suggested.

"Then why not just flag you and me?" Ilia questioned with a frown. "Why everybody, and then why split us up into entirely different detention areas?"

"... Wait," Ruby murmured, sitting up from where she'd slumped pouting on the bench. Or maybe it was the bunk. "Uh, not to be all 'main character-y', but uh... what if it's about me?" 

At the rest of the group's glances, she swallowed. "That Tyrian guy, he wanted to kidnap me and take me to Cinder... well, probably Salem." She winced a little. "I mean I don't see him hacking the system and registering us as criminals, but... if Salem wants me someplace that someone can come and get me..."

"We've gotta get out of here, now," Yang snarled, stepping to the door and brushing Kai back.

"Whoa whoa whoa," Kai said, pushing on Yang's shoulders. "You blast that open and they'll be on our asses and pumping us full of rounds so fast you'd think it was ten cent night at the pump'n'dump bar. ... Sorry," she added with a glance at her flustered girlfriend.

Yang scowled, but nodded. Then glanced at the rack where their coats were hung. "What about your coat? I could maybe get it with my grappling hook."

Kai eyed the distance, and the rack, then slowly shook her head. "Same problem, when you yanked it back it'd pull that over and make a hell of a clatter. ... You're on to something though. Hey, lend me a hand."

The blonde eyed her, then rolled her eyes and detached her right arm, passing it over. "Been waiting long for that one?"

"You know damn well that everyone who knows you has been waiting for that one." Kai slipped the arm, and her own, out through the bars, doing her best to make flapping motions at one of the outside pockets. "I bet they only took the very most surface level stuff out of my dimensional pockets. If I can knock something free we might be able to use it to get out of here more quietly. C'moooon my fuckin' lockpicks..."

Her thumps to the pocket managed to dislodge, in order, a pack of cigarettes, some hand sanitizer, a small handful of datasticks that clattered quietly to the floor...

... and one of the recruitment beacons, which thudded more heavily, rolled a short distance, and settled.

"... Yeah, that'd do it," Kai murmured, squatting down and using the arm to roll the mostly spherical device over, its not-very-prettily-joined outer sections at least having stopped it from rolling away.

"Wait, wouldn't that take us right back to Makarzia?" Ilia said with a frown as Kai handed Yang her arm back and picked up the beacon.

"Yup." Kai turned and settled back to sit on the floor, eyeing the beacon. "And without my Guildhall beacon, we wouldn't be able to come back very quickly. We'd have to earn enough Makarzian credits to buy a new one, plus guest passes for all of you. It'd be... really expensive, so it'd take awhile."

"How long is 'awhile'?" Blake asked, frowning.

Kai hissed in a breath through her teeth as she turned over the beacon in her hands. "Conservative estimate... four months."

"What?!" Weiss yelped.

"We can't leave everyone else here for four months!" Ruby protested.

"Well, see, that's the thing, we wouldn't have to," Kai quickly interjected. "Time runs at different rates across the multiverse, and it only stops being  _ really _ difficult for you to go to an earlier timestamp if you've been off of a dimension for over a year. So we'd have to earn some extra credits to pay for time differential too, but we could come back at  _ almost _ the same time we left, just somewhere else in Argus that we have coordinates for, like Blake's house."

The others all exchanged a glance. Finally, after a bit of silence, Kai pushed herself to her feet. "Look, I'm not gonna lie to you. Us earning the credits to get back here... it's gonna be rough. It'll take a long time, and you'll probably have to do some things you're not entirely comfortable with. Makarzia's a rough place... and the exchange rate of its credits to the Guild's isn't great. Now I believe we can do this, but the overwhelming majority of people here are your team, Ruby. This one's your decision."

Ruby considered that, looking a bit forlorn to have to do so, but obviously trying to think through everything. "... So, when you say... stuff we're not entirely comfortable with...?"

"Stealing, mostly. Maybe roughing people up, generally gangbangers and street toughs." Kai snorted softly, giving them a bitter grin. "Larcenous shit." She hesitated a little, then shook her head. "It won't be stuff like taking hits, though. That crap's behind me. But it won't be very Huntress-like work."

Ruby frowned more deeply, obviously torn. Then she glanced at the entrance door, picturing one of Salem's minions coming through it at any time...

... picturing what they might do to the rest of the group to make her go along more quietly.

"... Okay. Let's do it."

"Alright." Kai closed her eyes, sending broadly.  _ Everyone, listen up. We're pretty sure the reason we've all got warrants is that one of Salem's assholes is trying to pin Ruby down so they can get at her. _

_ Oh gods, _ Jaune's mental voice sent back.

_ I managed to get my hands on one of Niobe's recruitment beacons, so I'm gonna take Team RWBY and Ilia to Makarzia with me. We'll be able to portal back to almost as soon as we left... once we earn the money. _

_ You sure about this, Red? _ Grey sent.  _ Makarzia's a dangerous place. Moreso in some ways than Remnant. _

_ I'll take care of everybody, don't worry. We'll see you guys when we get back. _ "Okay, everyone, we need to huddle up pretty tight to get everyone with one beacon," Kai said, gesturing all of them into a tight clump. She put an arm around Ilia's, the other holding the beacon sliding around Weiss. "Okay, hold on tight. Oh, and when you have to puke, for the love of everything turn outwards first."

"Wait, what?" Yang said with a blink as Kai pressed the button.

_ Fwip. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's it, folks. While in my CYOA game, Kai's entire RWBY storyline is called "Epic of Remnant", here I decided to make it the opening arc, her journey to get to Remnant, and end it with her leaving, and then give the other arcs their own unique names. So, considering how much I'm hyperfixating on this, probably be seeing you soon in chapter one of Notorious.


End file.
